Reading The Lightning Thief at Camp Jupiter
by Thaliagrl789
Summary: When Luke arrives at Camp Jupiter after being release from the Underworld, he meets up with some old friends and meets new ones while being forced to read about Percy's adventures with Percy, Reyna, Jason, Thalia, Annabeth, Grover, Piper, Leo, Nico, Hazel, Frank, the Stolls, and Jacinda. T for Language.
1. Facing the Truth

**Disclaimer: I do NOT own Percy Jackson**

My footsteps echoed as I briskly walked down the dark passageway. I was free from the underworld. According to Lord Hades, much of Camp Half-Blood was currently at a roman camp called Camp Jupiter. I burst through the doors of DOA Recording Studios and onto the streets of Hollywood.

For the first time in months, I breathed in the fresh air. I quickly hailed a taxi and headed off to San Francisco.

Upon arrival at Camp Jupiter, I was fiercely questioned for my identity and they requested all of my weapons. Of course, after being in the underworld for 2 full years, I was unarmed. Many Romans began to surround me and escorted me to a large and seemingly empty room. "We've been expecting you." I heard from the far corner. Percy Jackson stepped out from the shadows; Annabeth Chase was by his side.

I heard footsteps behind me and turned around. A young blonde boy stepped out, flanked be 2 other kids his age. The doors burst open and I saw the person that I had missed the most.

Jacinda Winsted- my ex-girlfriend- framed the doorway. "Luke." She muttered. I wanted to run and hug her right then but I had a feeling that would be frowned upon. Moments later, the room was filled with people; Many of which I didn't know.

"I understand that introductions are needed, but first, you must tell us who you are." The blonde boy stated.

"I am Luke Castellan." I said loudly. Percy sneered and gestured back to the blonde.

"My name is Jason Grace. I am son of Jupiter, AKA, Zeus." The blonde guy said, completely emotionless "This is Piper McLean, daughter of Aphrodite," He pointed to the girl on his left and wrapped his arm around her, "This is Leo Valdez, son of Hephaestus." He put his other arm around the Latino boy's shoulder.

"Nico di Angelo, son of Hades." Said the pale boy behind me. "I don't believe that we have ever formally met, but I was one of the kids trying to get you killed."

"Reyna, demigod daughter of Bellona, and Praetor of Camp Jupiter."

"Frank, son of Mars, AKA, Ares."

"Hazel, daughter of Pluto, AKA, Hades."

I saw Thalia and Grover standing side by side. On the other side of the room stood the Stoll twins, my brothers. Reyna dropped a large box on the desk in the center of the room. She pulled out a book and read the title, "Percy Jackson and the Olympians the Lightning Thief."

"What?" I asked.

"These books are written in Percy's point of view from the time he was 12 years old. We have been ordered to read them as a group once you arrived." Reyna explained.

We all sat on the floor and the book was handed to Annabeth. "I thought that we are all dyslexic…" I frowned.

"These are Greek copies, you dummy." Reyna scoffed. Annabeth opened the book to the first page and sighed. Jacinda scooted a little bit closer to me and looked me in the eye. It had been way too long since the last time I saw her pretty face, but all I cared was that she was here right now.

Annabeth cleared her throat and began to read.


	2. The Fury

**Disclaimer: I do NOT own Percy Jackson. Any material in BOLD is from the Lightning Thief book, which was written by Rick Riordan. **

"Chapter one," Annabeth began, "**I Accidentally Vaporize my Pre-Algebra Teacher**"

"Okay… um, how do you do that on accident?" I noted.

"Yeah! I wish I could vaporize my teachers!" Piper gasped

"Let Annabeth keep reading and you will find out!" Percy scoffed at me.

"Chill!" I huffed and rolled my eyes.

**"Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood.**

"Who does?" Jacinda asked. Nobody answered.

**If you're reading this because you think you might be one of us, my advice is:** **close this book right now. Believe what ever lie your mom or dad told you about your birth, and try to lead a normal life.**

"Is that even possible?" Travis raised his eyebrows.

"Maybe… you guys have never tried." Percy sighed, a small grin escaped his mouth.

"Oh, just stop trying to defend yourself. And, stop giving people fake advice. It won't work." Thalia grinned back.

"Just stop giving people advice in general! Your advice sucks!" Nico joined in.

"Shut up!" Percy said, hanging his head down and staring at the ground, his cheeks turning a slight shade of pink. I literally had to bite my tongue to keep from making some sort of snide remark.

**Being a half-blood is dangerous. It's scary. Most of the time, it gets you killed in painful, nasty ways.**

I cleared my throat and waved my hand in the air.

**If you're a normal kid, reading this because you think it's fiction, great. Read on. I envy you for being able to believe that none of this ever happened.**

**But if you recognize yourself in these pages—if you feel something stirring inside—stop reading immediately. You might be one of us. And once you know that, it's only a matter of time before _they _sense it too, and they'll come for you.**

**Don't say I didn't warn you.**

"It's not gonna work!" Jacinda sang.

**My name is Percy Jackson.**

"No dip, Sherlock!" I laughed along with the others.

**I'm twelve years old. Until a _few _months ago, I was a boarding student at Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled kids in upstate New York.**

**Am I a troubled kid?**

"I'd be worried if somebody said that I wasn't." Percy chuckled.

**Yeah. You could say that.**

"You even admitted it back then!" Jason smiled.

**I could start at any point in my short miserable life to prove it, but things really started going bad last May, when our sixth-grade class took a field trip to Manhattan— twenty-eight mental-case kids and two teachers on a yellow school bus, heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at ancient Greek and Roman stuff.**

"Boring!" Leo shouted

**I know—it sounds like torture.**

Annabeth simply shook her head in disbelief.

**Most Yancy field trips were.**

**But Mr. Brunner, our Latin teacher, was leading this trip, so I had hopes.**

"Mr. Brunner…." Annabeth repeated quietly to herself. She had heard that name before, but she couldn't remember where…

**Mr. Brunner was this middle-aged guy in a motorized wheelchair. He had thinning hair and a scruffy beard and a frayed tweed jacket, which always smelled like coffee.**

"Yuck! I hate coffee!" Jacinda grumbled.

The whole room gasped in sync. They looked at her accusingly. "What?" She asked.

"That is kind of a good thing though." Jason sighed, "On caffeine, you would be TERRIFTING!" Jacinda smiled and nodded really, extremely fast.

**You wouldn't think he'd be cool, but he told stories and jokes and let us play games in class. He also had this awesome collection of Roman armor and weapons, so he was the only teacher whose class didn't put me to sleep.**

Another gasp, this time, just Annabeth. "You slept during class!" She teased.

"I'm not surprised." I scoffed.

**I hoped the trip would be okay. At least, I hoped that for once I wouldn't get in trouble.**

"Again, not gonna happen." Thalia laughed, "You fill people with such false hope."

**Boy, was I wrong.**

"Dun dun dun!" Travis yelled dramatically.

**See, bad things happen to me on field trips. Like at my fifth-grade school, when we went to the Saratoga battlefield, I had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. I wasn't aiming for the school bus, but of course I got expelled anyway.**

"Well duh!" Nico said, flabbergasted. "You blew up the bus!"

Percy shook his head and blushed again.

**And before that, at my fourth-grade school, when we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, I sort of hit the wrong lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim. And the time before that... Well, you get the idea.**

"Oh gods! It continues!" Annabeth shuddered.

"Aw! I wanted to here more!" Frank sighed.

**This trip, I was determined to be good.**

**All the way into the city, I put up with Nancy Bobofit, the freckly, redheaded kleptomaniac girl, hitting my best friend Grover**

More gasping.

**in the back of the head with chunks of peanut butter-and-ketchup sandwich.**

"That is worse than actually hitting him!" Piper gagged.

"It wasn't that bad." Grover shrugged.

**Grover was an easy target. He was scrawny. He cried when he got frustrated. He must've been held back several grades, because he was the only sixth grader with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin. On top of all that, he was crippled.**

"That is such a LOVELY introduction." Grover sighed.

The others laughed as Percy and Grover tried to hide their faces. "Don't worry, the time will come for the rest your introductions." Reyna said flatly.

**He had a note excusing him from PE for the rest of his life because he had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. He walked funny, like every step hurt him, but don't let that fool you. You should've seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria.**

"That reminds me of Hover Dam." Thalia smiled.

**Anyway, Nancy Bobofit was throwing wads of sandwich that stuck in his curly brown hair, and she knew I couldn't do anything back to her because I was already on probation. The headmaster had threatened me with death by in-school suspension if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip.**

"I have a bad feeling that you do something along those lines." Hazel frowned.

**"I'm going to kill her," I mumbled.**

"Please do!" many of the others chorused.

**Grover tried to calm me down. "It's okay. I like peanut butter."**

**He dodged another piece of Nancy's lunch.**

**"That's it." I started to get up, but Grover pulled me back to my seat.**

"Aw!" I whined.

**"You're already on probation," he reminded me. "You know you'll get blamed if anything happens."**

**Looking back on it, I wish I'd decked Nancy Bobofit right then and there.**

"Would you _really_ deck a girl?" Annabeth asked sweetly.

"Nancy doesn't really count as a girl." Percy shrugged. Annabeth scooted over slightly away from him. Percy laughed and tackled her, kissing her cheek a million times over. How much have I really missed?

**In-school suspension would've been nothing compared to the mess I was about to get myself into.**

**Mr. Brunner led the museum tour.**

**He rode up front in his wheelchair, guiding us through the big echoey galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old black-and-orange pottery.**

**It blew my mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand years.**

"Longer." Annabeth sighed.

**He gathered us around a thirteen-foot-tall stone column with a big sphinx on the top, and started telling us how it was a grave marker, a _stele, _for a girl about our age. He told us about the carvings on the sides. I was trying to listen to what he had to say, because it was kind of interesting,**

"Yay! You thought it was interesting!" Annabeth grinned.

**but everybody around me was talking, and every time I told them to shut up, the other teacher chaperone, Mrs. Dodds, would give me the evil eye.**

**Mrs. Dodds was this little math teacher from Georgia who always wore a black leather jacket, even though she was fifty years old. She looked mean enough to ride a Harley right into your locker. She had come to Yancy halfway through the year, when our last math teacher had a nervous breakdown.**

**From her first day, Mrs. Dodds loved Nancy Bobofit and figured I was devil spawn. She would point her crooked finger at me and say, "Now, honey," real sweet, and I knew I was going to get after-school detention for a month.**

**One time, after she'd made me erase answers out of old math workbooks until midnight, I told Grover I didn't think Mrs. Dodds was human. He looked at me, real serious, and said, "You're absolutely right."**

"Grover!" All of us from camp Half-Blood gasped.

"Cover blower!" Nico laughed.

"And why hadn't you gotten him out of there by then?" I wondered. Everyone looked at me like I was crazy for defending Percy. So what if I cared about Percy's well being? He was 12 and the first monster attacks are _always _the scariest.

**Mr. Brunner kept talking about Greek funeral art.**

**Finally, Nancy Bobofit snickered something about the naked guy on the stele, and I turned around and said, "Will you _shut up_?"**

Everyone snickered.

**It came out louder than I meant it to.**

Now, it was a full on 'laughing so hard you cry' moment. I gave Percy a little pat on the back, but he stopped laughing and stared at me, not even blinking. I gently backed away and sat there, without even a smile crossing my face.

**The whole group laughed. Mr. Brunner stopped his story.**

**"Mr. Jackson," he said, "did you have a comment?"**

**My face was totally red. **

Real Percy's face did just that.

**I said, "No, sir."**

**Mr. Brunner pointed to one of the pictures on the stele. "Perhaps you'll tell us what this picture represents?**

"Uh-oh!" I heard around the room.

**I looked at the carving, and felt a flush of relief, because I actually recognized it. "That's Kronos eating his kids, right?"**

My face paled and I put my head between my knees. Jacey got a little closer and rubbed her hand up and down my spine, "It's only going to get harder." She whispered. I tilted my head to the side to look her in the eye. She placed her head on my shoulder and I kissed her lightly.

**"Yes," Mr. Brunner said, obviously not satisfied.**

**"And he _did _this because..."**

"He was on bath salts." I joked, my failed attempt to lighten the mood. "What? Have you not heard the story about the guy eating the other guy's face off?" I added when all eyes were trained on me. I looked around, shook my head, then returned to my original position.

**"Well..." I racked my brain to remember. "Kronos was the king god,** **and—"**

I gave Percy a questioning from between my legs.

"I was twelve." He stated.

**"god?" Mr. Brunner asked.**

**"Titan," I corrected myself. "And ... he didn't trust his kids, who were the gods. So, um, Kronos ate them, right? But his wife hid baby Zeus, and gave Kronos a rock to eat instead.**

"I have one question." Hazel frowned, "How did he not notice it was a rock? I mean really, mistaking a rock to be your child?"

"He wasn't really the most observant thing out there." I muttered.

**And later, when Zeus grew up, he tricked his dad, Kronos, into barfing up his brothers and sisters—"**

**"Eeew!" said one of the girls behind me.**

**"—and so there was this big fight between the gods and the Titans," I continued, "and the gods won."**

"That my friend, is how you put the biggest war of all time, into one single sentence." I sighed.

**Some snickers from the group.**

**Behind me, Nancy Bobofit mumbled to a friend, "Like we're going to use this in real life. Like it's going to say on our job applications, 'Please explain why Kronos ate his kids.'"**

"Job applications usually don't say 'please'" Somebody said.

**"And why, Mr. Jackson," Brunner said, "to paraphrase Miss Bobofit's excellent question, does this matter in real life?"**

**"Busted," Grover muttered.**

**"Shut up," Nancy hissed, her face even brighter red than her hair.**

"Karma!" Leo sang

**At least Nancy got packed, too. Mr. Brunner was the only one who ever caught her saying anything wrong. He had radar ears.**

**I thought about his question, and shrugged. "I don't know, sir."**

**"I see." Mr. Brunner looked disappointed. "Well, half credit, Mr. Jackson. Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him disgorge his other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods, had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan's stomach. The gods defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld."**

"It is a _very _dark place." I state.

"**On that happy note, it's time for lunch. Mrs. Dodds, would you lead us back outside?"**

**The class drifted off, the girls holding their stomachs, the guys pushing each other around and acting like doofuses.**

Everyone rolled their eyes

**Grover and I were about to follow when Mr. Brunner said, "Mr. Jackson."**

**I knew that was coming.**

"Busted." Connor hummed.

**I told Grover to keep going. Then I turned toward Mr. Brunner. "Sir?"**

**Mr. Brunner had this look that wouldn't let you go— intense brown eyes that could've been a thousand years old and had seen everything.**

**"You must learn the answer to my question," Mr. Brunner told me.**

**"About the Titans?"**

**"About real life. And how your studies apply to it."**

**"Oh."**

**"What you learn from me," he said, "is vitally important. I expect you to treat it as such. I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson."**

**I wanted to get angry; this guy pushed me so hard.**

**I mean, sure, it was kind of cool on tournament days, when he dressed up in a suit of Roman armor and shouted: "What ho!'" and challenged us, sword-point against chalk, to run to the board and name every Greek and Roman person who had ever _lived, _and their mother, and what god they worshiped.**

"Roman!" Jason grinned.

**But Mr. Brunner expected me to be as good as everybody else, despite the fact that I have dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and I had never made above a C— in my life. No—he didn't expect me to be _as good; _he expected me to be _better. _And I just couldn't learn all those names and facts, much less spell them correctly.**

**I mumbled something about trying harder, while Mr. Brunner took one long sad look at the stele, like he'd been at this girl's funeral.**

"He probably was." Annabeth said.

**He told me to go outside and eat my lunch.**

**The class gathered on the front steps of the museum, where we could watch the foot traffic along Fifth Avenue.**

**Overhead, a huge storm was brewing, with clouds blacker than I'd ever seen over the city. **

"Dad!" Thalia exclaimed. Jason laughed a little and nudged Thalia.

**I figured maybe it was global warming or something, because the weather all across New York State had been weird since Christmas.**

**We'd had massive snowstorms, flooding, and wildfires from lightning strikes. I wouldn't have been surprised if this was a hurricane blowing in.**

The two Zeus kids shook their heads.

**Nobody else seemed to notice. Some of the guys were pelting pigeons with Lunchables crackers. Nancy Bobofit was trying to pickpocket something from a lady's purse, and, of course, Mrs. Dodds wasn't seeing a thing.**

"Sounds like a Hermes kid." Connor joked.

"She would be a disgrace to the Hermes cabin!" I yelled.

Percy shot a glare at me, "and you're not?" He huffed. By now, I was on the verge of a breakdown. I couldn't take those comments anymore!

**Grover and I sat on the edge of the fountain, away from the others. We thought that maybe if we did that, everybody wouldn't know we were from _that _school—the school for loser freaks who couldn't make it elsewhere.**

**"Detention?" Grover asked.**

**"Nah," I said. "Not from Brunner. I just wish he'd lay off me sometimes. I mean—I'm not a genius."**

"Understatement!" I said back to Percy. He gave me a concerned look before turning his attention back to Annabeth.

**Grover didn't say anything for a while. Then, when I thought he was going to give me some deep philosophical comment to make me feel better, he said, "Can I have your apple?"**

Everyone laughed at this.

**I didn't have much of an appetite, so I let him take it.**

"Don't play hacky sack with an apple if Grover is there." Percy grinned.

**I watched the stream of cabs going down Fifth Avenue, and thought about my mom's apartment, only a little ways uptown from where we sat. I hadn't seen her since Christmas. I wanted so bad to jump in a taxi and head home. **

**She'd hug me and be glad to see me, but she'd be disappointed, too. She'd send me right back to Yancy, remind me that I had to try harder, even if this was my sixth school in six years and I was probably going to be kicked out again. I wouldn't be able to stand that sad look she'd give me.**

I got a little misty eyed, thinking of my mother back at home, waiting for me to come home. Even though she was crazy, I still loved her. A lot.

I sniffed back my tears when I realized that Nico was looking at me funny.

**Mr. Brunner parked his wheelchair at the base of the handicapped ramp. He ate celery while he read a paperback novel. A red umbrella stuck up from the back of his chair, making it look like a motorized cafe table.**

**I was about to unwrap my sandwich when Nancy Bobofit appeared in front of me with her ugly friends—I guess she'd gotten tired of stealing from the tourists—and dumped her half-eaten lunch in Grover's lap.**

**"Oops." She grinned at me with her crooked teeth. Her freckles were orange, as if somebody had spray-painted her face with liquid Cheetos.**

"Liquid Cheetos! We should invent that!" Travis cheered to his brother.

**I tried to stay cool. The school counselor had told me a million times, "Count to ten, get control of your temper." But I was so mad my mind went blank. A wave roared in my ears.**

Percy grinned.

**I don't remember touching her, but the next thing I knew, Nancy was sitting on her butt in the fountain, screaming, "Percy pushed me!"**

**Mrs. Dodds materialized next to us.**

**Some of the kids were whispering: "Did you see—"**

**"—the water—"**

**"—like it grabbed her—"**

**I didn't know what they were talking about. All I knew was that I was in trouble again.**

**As soon as Mrs. Dodds was sure poor little Nancy was okay, promising to get her a new shirt at the museum gift shop, etc., etc., Mrs. Dodds turned on me. There was a triumphant fire in her eyes, as if I'd done something she'd been waiting for all semester. "Now, honey—"**

"Honey?" Jacinda questioned.

**"I know," I grumbled. "A month erasing workbooks."**

**That wasn't the right thing to say.**

**"Come with me," Mrs. Dodds said.**

**"Wait!" Grover yelped. "It was me. _I _pushed her."**

Many of us rolled our eyes. "Nice… nice try buddy," I choked out.

"Luke? Have you gone… mental?" Percy asked, leaning closer to me.

"No." I scoffed.

"But… you're crying." Annabeth said.

"I was just thinking okay!" I yelled.

**I stared at him, stunned. I couldn't believe he was trying to cover for me. Mrs. Dodds scared Grover to death.**

**She glared at him so hard his whiskery chin trembled.**

**"I don't think so, Mr. Underwood," she said.**

**"But—"**

**"You—**_**will**_—**stay—here."**

**Grover looked at me desperately.**

**"It's okay, man," I told him. "Thanks for trying."**

**"Honey," Mrs. Dodds barked at me. "_Now_."**

"Honey? Again?" Jace huffed.

**Nancy Bobofit smirked.**

**I gave her my deluxe I'll-kill-you-later stare.**

"That is a scary stare!" I exclaimed. I had gotten it just about every time I saw Percy.

**Then I turned to face Mrs. Dodds, but she wasn't there. She was standing at the museum entrance, way at the top of the steps, gesturing impatiently at me to come on.**

**How'd she get there so fast?**

**I have moments like that a lot, when my brain falls asleep or something, and the next thing I know I've missed something, as if a puzzle piece fell out of the universe and left me staring at the blank place behind it. The school counselor told me this was part of the ADHD, my brain misinterpreting things.**

**I wasn't so sure.**

**I went after Mrs. Dodds.**

**Halfway up the steps, I glanced back at Grover. He was looking pale, cutting his eyes between me and Mr. Brunner, like he wanted Mr. Brunner to notice what was going on, but Mr. Brunner was absorbed in his novel.**

"Must have been a really good book!" Frank huffed.

Everyone nodded in agreement

**I looked back up. Mrs. Dodds had disappeared again. She was now inside the building, at the end of the entrance hall.**

**Okay, I thought. She's going to make me buy a new shirt for Nancy at the gift shop.**

**But apparently that wasn't the plan.**

**I followed her deeper into the museum. When I finally caught up to her, we were back in the Greek and Roman section.**

**Except for us, the gallery was empty.**

**Mrs. Dodds stood with her arms crossed in front of a big marble frieze of the Greek gods. She was making this weird noise in her throat, like growling.**

Percy shivered.

**Even without the noise, I would've been nervous. It's weird being alone with a teacher, especially Mrs. Dodds. Something about the way she looked at the frieze, as if she wanted to pulverize it...**

**"You've been giving us problems, honey," she said.**

Jacinda looked irritated. "Cut it with the honey thing! Am I the only one that finds that annoying?" Everyone nodded.

**I did the safe thing. I said, "Yes, ma'am."**

**She tugged on the cuffs of her leather jacket. "Did you really think you would get away with it?"**

**The look in her eyes was beyond mad. It was evil.**

**She's a teacher, I thought nervously. It's not like she's going to hurt me.**

"No! She's not going to hurt you! She'll make your death quick and painless!" Jason kidded.

**I said, "I'll—I'll try harder, ma'am."**

**Thunder shook the building.**

"Dad!" Both Thals and Jason remarked.

**"We are not fools, Percy Jackson," Mrs. Dodds said. "It was only a matter of time before we found you out. Confess, and you will suffer less pain."**

**I didn't know what she was talking about.**

**All I could think of was that the teachers must've found the illegal stash of candy I'd been selling out of my dorm room.**

"Dude!" Travis exclaimed.

**Or maybe they'd realized I got my essay on _Tom Sawyer _from the Internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away my grade. Or worse, they were going to make me read the book.**

"It's a good book!" Annabeth sighed.

"Does it look like I care?" Percy said, knitting his eyebrows.

**"Well?" she demanded.**

**"Ma'am, I don't..."**

**"Your time is up," she hissed.**

"It was all my fault…" I murmured miserably.

**Then the weirdest thing happened. Her eyes began to glow like barbecue coals. Her fingers stretched, turning into talons. Her jacket melted into large, leathery wings. She wasn't human. She was a shriveled hag with bat wings and claws and a mouth full of yellow fangs, and she was about to slice me to ribbons.**

"A Fury?" I questioned.

"Yeah. What did you expect? A bunch of fluffy unicorns?" Percy rolled his eyes.

"No. Furies are bad. I'm…. I'm sorry."

"Uh huh. Real sincere." Percy rolled his eyes again. I looked at Jace and she sighed, looking into my eyes.

**Then things got even stranger.**

**Mr. Brunner, who'd been out in front of the museum a minute before, wheeled his chair into the doorway of the gallery, holding a pen in his hand.**

**"What ho, Percy!" he shouted, and tossed the pen through the air.**

"What ho?" Nico and Thalia wondered, smirking.

**Mrs. Dodds lunged at me.**

**With a yelp, I dodged and felt talons slash the air next to my ear. I snatched the ballpoint pen out of the air, but when it hit my hand, it wasn't a pen anymore. It was a sword—Mr. Brunner's bronze sword, which he always used on tournament day.**

"Riptide." Annabeth smiled.

"The best sword ever." Percy gloated.

"That is one scary blade." I chuckled.

"Yours is scarier." Percy shuddered. I smiled a little.

Frank laughed, "That is how you got that thing? From your sixth grade Latin teacher?" Percy nodded, grinning like wild.

**Mrs. Dodds spun toward me with a murderous look in her eyes.**

**My knees were jelly. My hands were shaking so bad I almost dropped the sword.**

I couldn't help but stifle a small laugh. I thought of how much Percy had improved as a swordsmen since then.

**She snarled, "Die, honey!"**

"Okay, you can DROP the Honey thing." Jacinda yelped in frustration.

**And she flew straight at me.**

**Absolute terror ran through my body. I did the only thing that came naturally: I swung the sword.**

**The metal blade hit her shoulder and passed clean through her body as if she were made of water. _Hisss!_**

**Mrs. Dodds was a sand castle in a power fan. She exploded into yellow powder, vaporized on the spot, leaving nothing but the smell of sulfur and a dying screech and a chill of evil in the air, as if those two glowing red eyes were still watching me.**

**I was alone.**

**There was a ballpoint pen in my hand.**

"The mist is still affecting him?"

**Mr. Brunner wasn't there. Nobody was there but me.**

**My hands were still trembling. My lunch must've been contaminated with magic mushrooms or something.**

**Had I imagined the whole thing?**

**I went back outside.**

**It had started to rain.**

**Grover was sitting by the fountain, a museum map tented over his head. Nancy Bobofit was still standing there, soaked from her swim in the fountain, grumbling to her ugly friends. When she saw me, she said, "I hope Mrs. Kerr whipped your butt."**

**I said, "Who?"**

**"Our **_**teacher.**_ **Duh!"**

**I blinked. We had no teacher named Mrs. Kerr. I asked Nancy what she was talking about.** **She just rolled her eyes and turned away.**

**I asked Grover where Mrs. Dodds was.**

**He said, "Who?"**

**But he paused first, and he wouldn't look at me, so I thought he was messing with me.**

"I hate to break it to you man, but you are one _terrible_ liar." Percy said, still smiling.

**"Not funny, man," I told him. "This is serious."**

**Thunder boomed overhead. **

For once, Thalia and Jason were silent, but they still shook their heads and frowned.

**I saw Mr. Brunner sitting under his red umbrella, reading his book, as if he'd never moved.**

**I went over to him.**

**He looked up, a little distracted. "Ah, that would be my pen. Please bring your own writing utensil in the future, Mr. Jackson."**

The whole group laughed. "Well, did you bring your own writing utensil next time?" Leo gasped between laughs.

"There…. There was never a next time." Percy snickered.

**I handed Mr. Brunner his pen. I hadn't even realized I was still holding it.**

**"Sir," I said, "where's Mrs. Dodds?"**

**He stared at me blankly. "Who?"**

"Now Chiron should teach Grover how to lie." Nico said.

**"The other chaperone. Mrs. Dodds. The pre-algebra teacher."**

**He frowned and sat forward, looking mildly concerned. "Percy, there is no Mrs. Dodds on this trip. As far as I know, there has never been a Mrs. Dodds at Yancy Academy. Are you feeling all right?"**

Annabeth closed the book gently and placed it on the floor in front of her feet. "You guys need to settle this." She sighed, her eyes flashed between me and Percy.

"Good luck getting me to make up with _that_" Percy scowled.

I sat silently and twiddled my thumbs.

There was a long pause before everyone except Percy and I sighed simultaneously. More silence. Finally, Jacinda picked up the book, "Chapter 2, **Three Old Ladies Knit the Socks of Death**." She read.


	3. The Socks of Death

**Disclaimer: I do NOT own Percy Jackson. Any material in BOLD is from the Lightning Thief book, which was written by Rick Riordan. **

"**Three Old Ladies Knit the Socks of Death,**"

"Uh oh." Everyone chimed.

**I was used to the occasional weird experience, but usually they were over quickly.**

**This twenty-four/seven hallucination was more than I could handle. For the rest of the school year, the entire campus seemed to be playing some kind of trick on me. The students acted as if they were completely and totally convinced that Mrs. Kerr—a perky blond woman whom I'd never seen in my life until she got on our bus at the end of the field trip—had been our pre-algebra teacher since Christmas.**

**Every so often I would spring a Mrs. Dodds reference on somebody, just to see if I could trip them up, but they would stare at me like I was psycho.**

**It got so I almost believed them—Mrs. Dodds had never existed.**

**Almost.**

**But Grover couldn't fool me.**

Grover shook his head slowly.

**When I mentioned the name Dodds to him, he would hesitate, and then claim she didn't exist. But I knew he was lying.**

**Something was going on. Something _had _happened at the museum.**

"Obviously seaweed brain," Annabeth rolled her eyes playfully.

**I didn't have much time to think about it during the days, but at night, visions of Mrs. Dodds with talons and leathery wings would wake me up in a cold sweat.**

Percy shivered at the thought of it. Sure, he's been through worse, but Mrs. Dodds still freaked him out.

**The freak weather continued, which didn't help my mood. One night, a thunderstorm blew out the windows** **in my dorm room. A few days later, the biggest tornado ever spotted in the Hudson Valley touched down only fifty miles from Yancy Academy. One of the current events we studied in social studies class was the unusual number of small planes that had gone down in sudden squalls in the Atlantic that year.**

"What is going on?" Piper questioned.

**I started feeling cranky and irritable most of the time. My grades slipped from D's to F's.**

**I got into more fights with Nancy Bobofit and her friends. I was sent out into the hallway in almost every class.**

**Finally, when our English teacher, Mr. Nicoll, asked me for the millionth time why I was too lazy to study for spelling tests, I snapped. I called him an old sot. I wasn't even sure what it meant, but it sounded good.**

"Way to go Percy! Call him an old sot!" Travis cheered.

Everyone grinned at the sight of this.

**The headmaster sent my mom a letter the following week, making it official: I would not be invited back next year to Yancy Academy.**

**Fine, I told myself. Just fine.**

**I was homesick.**

**I wanted to be with my mom in our little apartment on the Upper East Side, even if I had to go to public school and put up with my obnoxious stepfather and his stupid poker parties.**

**And yet... there were things I'd miss at Yancy. The view** **of the woods outside my dorm window, the Hudson River in the distance, the smell of pine trees. I'd miss Grover, who'd been a good friend,** **even if he was a little strange.**

"So nice of you!" Grover sighed.

**I worried how he'd survive next year without me.**

**I'd miss Latin class, too—Mr. Brunner's crazy tournament days and his faith that I could do well.**

**As exam week got closer, Latin was the only test I studied for.**

"Understandable." I nodded.

**I hadn't forgotten what Mr. Brunner had told me about this subject being life-and-death for me. I wasn't sure why, but I'd started to believe him.**

**The evening before my final, I got so frustrated I threw the _Cambridge Guide to Greek Mythology _across my dorm room. **

"Aw… Is Percy frustrated?" I cooed.

"Well yeah! Every time I turned the page, the letters would move!" Percy huffed angrily.

**Words had started swimming off the page, circling my head, the letters doing one-eighties as if they were riding skateboards. There was no way I was going to remember the difference between Chiron and Charon,**

"You sure can now! Charon was kinda scary!" Grover shivered.

**or Polydictes and Polydeuces. And conjugating those Latin verbs? Forget it.**

Chuckles rang across the room.

**I paced the room, feeling like ants were crawling around inside my shirt.**

**I remembered Mr. Brunner's serious expression, his thousand-year-old eyes. _I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson._**

**I took a deep breath. I picked up the mythology book.**

**I'd never asked a teacher for help before. **

"Are you too scared?" Travis grinned.

"No…. teachers just make me nervous…" Percy sighed.

**Maybe if I talked to Mr. Brunner, he could give me some pointers. At least I could apologize for the big fat F I was about to score on his exam. I didn't want to leave Yancy Academy with him thinking I hadn't tried.**

**I walked downstairs to the faculty offices. Most of them were dark and empty, but Mr. Brunner's door was ajar, light from his window stretching across the hallway floor.**

**I was three steps from the door handle when I heard voices inside the office. Mr. Brunner asked a question. A voice that was definitely Grover's said,**

_**"...**_ **worried about Percy, sir."**

**I froze.**

"Eavesdropper!" Grover shouted.

**I'm not usually an eavesdropper,** **but I dare you to try not listening if you hear your best friend talking about you to an adult.**

**I inched closer.**

**"... alone this summer," Grover was saying. "I mean, a Kindly One in the _school_! Now that we know for sure, and _they _know too—"**

**"We would only make matters worse by rushing him," Mr. Brunner said. "We need the boy to mature more."**

"Pftt… Percy is _still_ not mature yet" I grinned.

"Hey! Am too!" he whined

"No you aren't!"

"That's it, you're going to get it!"

Percy lunged at me. Good thing he wasn't armed!

"Oh my gods! Boys!" Jacinda said, shooting to her feet. Percy got me easily into a headlock. I didn't necessarily _want _to fight back, so I let him pull the hair on the front of my head back with his hand.

"Let. Me. GO!" I struggled to say. If we didn't have ourselves an audience, I would have given him a nice hard kick in the soft spot to make him let go, but I could feel the others trying to pry him off of me.

"Why should I?" Percy yelled.

"What are you two? In kindergarten?" Piper yelled.

"I can put this in a Kindergarten scenario! Percy stole Luke's pencil sharpener and Luke asked for it back. Now Percy is mad at Luke for asking for the sharpener so he starts a fight. Luke is still begging for it back and Percy keeps taunting him." Leo shouted.

Percy thrust me forward and let go. I stumbled 3 steps forward and fell to my knees. "Ouch." I grunted.

"What has gotten into you Percy?" Annabeth asked gently.

Percy sat down and rubbed his temples. "Everything. There is just so much going on." He sighed. "I'm sorry that I'm taking it out on you Luke."

"No! No, I kinda deserve every bit of it." I admitted.

I retreated to my seat beside Jacinda, who started to read again.

**"But he may not have time. The summer solstice dead line— _"_**

**"Will have to be resolved without him, Grover. Let him enjoy his ignorance while he still can."**

**"Sir, he _saw _her..."**

**"His imagination," Mr. Brunner insisted. "The Mist over the students and staff will be enough to convince him of that."**

**"Sir, I ... I can't fail in my duties again."**

Thalia frowned and looked at Grover.

**Grover's voice was choked with emotion. "You know what that would mean."**

**"You haven't failed, Grover," Mr. Brunner said kindly. "I should have seen her for what she was. Now let's just worry about keeping Percy alive until next fall—"**

"That would be hard to hear, considering that you have NO idea what is going on!" Nico laughed.

**The mythology book dropped out of my hand and hit the floor with a thud.**

**Mr. Brunner went silent.**

**My heart hammering, I picked up the book and backed down the hall.**

**A shadow slid across the lighted glass of Brunner's office door, the shadow of something much taller than my wheelchair-bound teacher, holding something that looked suspiciously like an archer's bow.**

"Seriously? In a school?" Annabeth scoffed.

**I opened the nearest door and slipped inside.**

**A few seconds later I heard a slow _clop-clop-clop, _like muffled wood blocks, then a sound like an animal snuffling right outside my door. A large, dark shape paused in front of the glass, and then moved on.**

**A bead of sweat trickled down my neck.**.

**Somewhere in the hallway, Mr. Brunner spoke. "Nothing," he murmured. "My nerves haven't been right since the winter solstice."**

**"Mine neither," Grover said. "But I could have sworn..."**

**"Go back to the dorm," Mr. Brunner told him. "You've got a long day of exams tomorrow."**

**"Don't remind me."**

"That must really suck. Being a satyr and going to schools means that you have to take exams _over and over_." I chuckled.

**The lights went out in Mr. Brunner's office.**

**I waited in the dark for what seemed like forever.**

**Finally, I slipped out into the hallway and made my way back up to the dorm.**

**Grover was lying on his bed, studying his Latin exam notes like he'd been there all night.**

**"Hey," he said, bleary-eyed. "You going to be ready for this test?"**

**I didn't answer.**

**"You look awful." He frowned. "Is everything okay?"**

**"Just... tired."**

**I turned so he couldn't read my expression, **

"Satyrs can read your emotions anyways" Grover retorted.

**and started getting ready for bed.**

**I didn't understand what I'd heard downstairs. I wanted to believe I'd imagined the whole thing.**

**But one thing was clear: Grover and Mr. Brunner were talking about me behind my back. They thought I was in some kind of danger.**

"Well yeah you're in danger! Do you think that a kid who gets attacked by demon teachers is perfectly safe?" Nico said.

**The next afternoon, as I was leaving the three-hour Latin exam,**

"That's not too bad… 3 hours." Jacinda shrugged.

**my eyes swimming with all the Greek and Roman names I'd misspelled, Mr. Brunner called me back inside.**

**For a moment, I was worried he'd found out about my eavesdropping the night before, but that didn't seem to be the problem.**

**"Percy," he said. "Don't be discouraged about leaving Yancy. It's ... it's for the best."**

**His tone was kind, but the words still embarrassed me. Even though he was speaking quietly, the other kids finishing the test could hear. Nancy Bobofit smirked at me and made sarcastic little kissing motions with her lips.**

"What the Hades is wrong with that chick?" I gasped.

**I mumbled, "Okay, sir."**

**"I mean..." Mr. Brunner wheeled his chair back and forth, like he wasn't sure what to say. "This isn't the right place for you. It was only a matter of time."**

"Camp Half-blood IS the right place though." Annabeth smiled.

"Apparently not, according to Hera." Percy grumbled.

**My eyes stung.**

**Here was my favorite teacher, in front of the class, telling me I couldn't handle it. After saying he believed in me all year, now he was telling me I was destined to get kicked out.**

"That is a HORRIBLE way to look at it." I shook my head.

**"Right," I said, trembling.**

**"No, no," Mr. Brunner said. "Oh, confound it all. What I'm trying to say ... you're not normal, Percy. That's nothing to be—"**

"Chiron is really bad at that." Jason sighed.

**"Thanks," I blurted. "Thanks a lot, sir, for reminding me."**

**"Percy—"**

**But I was already gone.**

**On the last day of the term, I shoved my clothes into my suitcase.**

**The other guys were joking around, talking about their vacation plans. One of them was going on a hiking trip to Switzerland. Another was cruising the Caribbean for a month. They were juvenile delinquents, like me, but they were _rich _juvenile delinquents. Their daddies were executives, or ambassadors, or celebrities. I was a nobody, from a family of nobodies.**

"Aw!" That crowd cooed.

**They asked me what I'd be doing this summer and I told them I was going back to the city.**

**What I didn't tell them was that I'd have to get a summer job walking dogs or selling magazine subscriptions, and spend my free time worrying about where I'd go to school in the fall.**

**"Oh," one of the guys said. "That's cool."**

**They went back to their conversation as if I'd never existed.**

"Do you have friends at Goode?" Annabeth asked.

"Yeah, a lot. I wonder what they were told about my little disappearing act…" Percy said thoughtfully.

**The only person I dreaded saying good-bye to was Grover, but as it turned out, I didn't have to. He'd booked a ticket to Manhattan on the same Greyhound as I had, so there we were, together again, heading into the city.**

**During the whole bus ride, Grover kept glancing nervously down the aisle, watching the other passengers. It occurred to me that he'd always acted nervous and fidgety when we left Yancy, as if he expected something bad to happen.**

**Before, I'd always assumed he was worried about getting teased. But there was nobody to tease him on the Greyhound.**

**Finally I couldn't stand it anymore.**

**I said, "Looking for Kindly Ones?"**

"That scared me so bad!" Grover shivered.

**Grover nearly jumped out of his seat. "Wha—what do you mean?"**

**I confessed about eavesdropping on him and Mr. Brunner the night before the exam.**

**Grover's eye twitched. "How much _did _you hear?"**

**"Oh ... not much. What's the summer solstice dead-line?"**

**He winced. "Look, Percy ... I was just worried for you, see? I mean, hallucinating about demon math teachers …"**

I shook my head. Grover was great and all, but he was an awful liar.

**"Grover—"**

**"And I was telling Mr. Brunner that maybe you were overstressed or something, because there was no such person as Mrs. Dodds, and ..."**

**"Grover, you're a really, really bad liar."**

**His ears turned pink.**

**From his shirt pocket, he fished out a grubby business card. "Just take this, okay? In case you need me this summer.**

**The card was in fancy script, which was murder on my dyslexic eyes, but I finally made out something like:**

_**Grover Underwood**_

_**Keeper**_

_**Half-Blood Hill**_

_**Long Island, New York**_

_**(800)**_ _**009-0009**_

"Jeez! Those things are terrible!" Nico huffed

**"What's Half—"**

**"Don't say it aloud!" he yelped. "That's my, um ... summer address."**

**My heart sank. Grover had a summer home. I'd never considered that his family might be as rich as the others at Yancy.**

"You really thought that?" Grover sighed sympathetically.

**"Okay," I said glumly. "So, like, if I want to come visit your mansion."**

**He nodded. "Or...or if you need me."**

**"Why would I need you?"**

"Ouch!" Leo scoffed.

**It came out harsher than I meant it to.**

"Glad that it wasn't really meant to hurt me!" Grover whimpered.

**Grover blushed right down to his Adam's apple. "Look, Percy, the truth is, I—I kind of have to protect you."**

**I stared at him.**

**All year long, I'd gotten in fights, keeping bullies away from him. I'd lost sleep worrying that he'd get beaten up next year without me.**

"Aw!" Everyone sighed again.

**And here he was acting like he was the one who defended _me._**

**"Grover," I said, "What exactly are you protecting me from?"**

"You never answered that question." Percy shook his head.

"Saved by that stupid hunk of metal!" Grover praised.

"But if it wasn't for that '_stupid hunk of metal_' I wouldn't have seen what I saw!" Percy grinned.

"I'm afraid to ask… but… what DID you see?" Piper asked, sounding very concerned. To answer, Jacinda continued.

**There was a huge grinding noise under our feet. Black smoke poured from the dashboard and the whole bus filled with a smell like rotten eggs.**

**The driver cursed and steered the Greyhound over to the side of the highway.**

**After a few minutes clanking around in the engine compartment, the driver announced that we'd all have to get off. Grover and I filed outside with everybody else.**

**We were on a stretch of country road—no place you'd notice if you didn't break down there. On our side of the highway there was nothing but maple trees and litter from passing cars. On the other side, across four lanes of asphalt shimmering with afternoon heat, was an old-fashioned fruit stand.**

**The stuff on sale looked really good: heaping boxes of blood red cherries and apples, walnuts and apricots, jugs of cider in a claw-foot tub full of ice_. _There were no customers, just three old ladies sitting in rocking chairs in the shade of a maple tree, knitting the biggest pair of socks I'd ever seen.**

"Suspicious…" Hazel frowned.

**I mean these socks were the size of sweaters, but they were clearly socks. The lady on the right knitted one of them. The lady on the left knitted the other. The lady in the middle held an enormous basket of electric-blue yarn.**

**All three women looked ancient, with pale faces wrinkled like fruit leather, silver hair tied back in white bandannas, bony arms sticking out of bleached cotton dresses**

"Oh no! Percy…" Annabeth pleaded.

**The weirdest thing was, they seemed to be looking right at me.**

"Percy…" Annabeth repeated.

**I looked over at Grover to say something about this and saw that the blood had drained from his face. His nose was twitching.**

**"Grover?" I said. "Hey, man—"**

**"Tell me they're not looking at you. They are, aren't they?"**

"Get out of there!" Annabeth shrieked.

**"Yeah. Weird, huh? You think those socks would fit me?"**

"Really? Seriously?" Jason said, dumbfounded.

"Why in Hell would you say that? This is serious Percy!" Annabeth scolded.

"I think they would be a little big." Jace stated. Percy snickered and looked at Annabeth.

"I'm right here!" He grinned.

"But you won't be!" Annabeth retorted.

"Well… no 'cause later I'm gonna leave to get food."

"Not because of food! You're gonna die!"

"Oh course I will! So will you, eventually. We all will. That is what living things do, they _DIE._" Percy scoffed.

Annabeth shook her head and Jacey continued to read.

**"Not funny, Percy. Not funny at all."**

**The old lady in the middle took out a huge pair of scissors—gold and silver, long-bladed, like shears.**

"Oh my gods!" Annabeth whined.

**I heard Grover catch his breath.**

**"We're getting on the bus," he told me. "Come on."**

"Listen to Grover…" Annabeth begged.

**"What?" I said. "It's a thousand degrees in there."**

**"Come on!'" He pried open the door and climbed inside, but I stayed back.**

"Percy!" Annabeth screamed.

"I didn't know what was going on!" Percy defended.

**Across the road, the old ladies were still watching me. The middle one cut the yarn, and I swear I could hear that _snip _across four lanes of traffic.**

The room fell into complete silence. Jacinda took a shaky breath beside me. She read slowly, and her voice was emotionless.

**Her two friends balled up the electric-blue socks, leaving me wondering who they could possibly be for—Sasquatch or Godzilla.**

**At the rear of the bus, the driver wrenched a big chunk of smoking metal out of the engine compartment. The bus shuddered, and the engine roared back to life.**

**The passengers cheered.**

**"Darn right!" yelled the driver. He slapped the bus with his hat. "Everybody back on board!"**

**Once we got going, I started feeling feverish, as if I'd caught the flu.**

**Grover didn't look much better. He was shivering and his teeth were chattering.**

**"Grover?"**

**"Yeah?"**

**"What are you not telling me?"**

**He dabbed his forehead with his shirt sleeve. "Percy, what did you see back at the fruit stand?"**

**"You mean the old ladies? What is it about them, man? They're not like ... Mrs. Dodds, are they?"**

"They are much, much worse." Annabeth muttered.

**His expression was hard to read, but I got the feeling that the fruit-stand ladies were something much, much worse than Mrs. Dodds. He said, "Just tell me what you saw."**

**"The middle one took out her scissors, and she cut the yarn."**

**He closed his eyes and made a gesture with his fingers that might've been crossing himself, but it wasn't. It was something else, something almost—older.**

Percy gave out a little laugh. "What" I said, "could possibly funny about this?" Percy shut up and motioned for Jace to read.

**He said, "You saw her snip the cord."**

**"Yeah. So?" But even as I said it, I knew it was a big deal.**

**"This is not happening," Grover mumbled. He started chewing at his thumb. "I don't want this to be like the last time."**

**"What last time?"**

Thalia looked down. Jason glanced over at her and sighed.

**"Always sixth grade. They never get past sixth."**

**"Grover," I said, because he was really starting to scare me. "What are you talking about?"**

**"Let me walk you home from the bus station. Promise me."**

Grover pressed a hard glare at Percy.

**This seemed like a strange request to me, but I promised he could.**

**"Is this like a superstition or something?" I asked.**

**No answer.**

**"Grover—that snipping of the yarn. Does that mean somebody is going to die?"**

**He looked at me mournfully; like he was already picking the kind of flowers I'd like best on my coffin.**

"This book is so depressing!" Connor moaned.

I nodded and looked at Percy. He was lying down with Annabeth's head on his stomach. Jacinda dropped the book on the floor and slid it to Jason. Jason looked around and opened the book.

"What flowers would you like best on your coffin?" I asked Percy.

"I don't know!" He remarked.

"Chapter three…" Jason sighed. "**Grover Unexpectedly Loses His Pants.**"


	4. Grover Loses His Pants

**Sorry that it has been a while. Been pretty busy.**

**Disclaimer: I do NOT own Percy Jackson. Any material in BOLD is from the Lightning Thief book, which was written by Rick Riordan. **

Everyone laughed. Grover blushed.

"**Confession time: I ditched Grover as soon as we got to the bus terminal.**"

"That was not very nice," Grover frowned.

"You were starting to scare me!" Percy defended.

"**I know, I know. It was rude. But Grover was freaking me out, looking at me like I was a dead man, muttering, 'Why does this always happen?' and 'Why does it always have to be sixth grade?'**

**Whenever he got upset, Grover's bladder acted up, so I wasn't surprised when, as soon as we hot off the bus he made me promise to wait for him, then made a beeline for the restroom.**

**Instead of waiting, I got my suitcase, slipped outside, and caught the first taxi uptown. 'East One- hundred and fourth and first,' I told the driver.**

**A word about my mother before you meet her. Her name is Sally Jackson, and she's the best person in the world,"**

"She is pretty great," Annabeth sighed

"I know…" Percy said sadly.

"**which just proves my theory that the best people have the rottenest luck.**"

"**Her own parents did in a plane crash when she was five,**"

Percy looked extremely sad, thinking of his mother.

"**And she was raised by an uncle who didn't care much about her. She wanted to be a novelist, so she spent high school working to save enough money for a college with a good creative writing program. Then, her uncle got cancer** **and she had to quit high school to take care of him. After he died, she was left with no money, no family, and no diploma. The only good break she ever got was meeting my dad.**

"**I don't have any memory of him, just this sort of warm glow, maybe the barest trace of his smile. My mom doesn't like to talk about him, because it makes her sad. She has no pictures.**"

"You have the same glow about your smile," Annabeth said.

"**See, they weren't married. She told me that he was rich and important, and they're relationship was a secret. Then one day, he set sail across the Atlantic on some important journey, and he never came back. Lost at sea, my mom told me. Not dead. Lost at sea.**"

"That is… sort of true." Percy smiled.

"**She worked odd jobs, took night classes to get her high school diploma, and raised me on her own. She never complained or got mad. Not even once. But I knew I wasn't an easy kid.**"

"Trust me, none of us were." Travis said in mock sympathy.

"**Finally, she married Gabe Ugliano, who was nice the first thirty seconds we knew him, then showed his colors as a world- class jerk. When I was young, I nicknamed him Smelly Gabe.**"

Percy gagged.

"**I'm sorry, but it's the truth. The guy reeked like moldy garlic pizza wrapped in gym shorts,**"

Jacinda gulped loudly and choked out, "Ew…"

"**Between the two of us, we made my mom's life pretty hard. The way Smelly Gabe treated her, the way he and I got along…well coming home is a good example.**"

"**I walked into our little apartment, hoping my mom would be home from work. Instead, Smelly Gabe was in the living room, playing poker with his buddies. The television blared ESPN.** **Chips and beer cans were strewn all over the carpet. Hardly looking up, he said around his cigar, 'So, you're home.'**"

"That's it?" Piper gasped. "No welcome back and a hug or something?"

"**'Where's my mom?'**"

"**'Working,' he said. 'You got any cash?'**"

"Say no!" Nico yelled.

"**That was it. No **_**Welcome back. Good to see you. How has your life been the last six months?**_"

"**Gabe had put on weight. He looked a tuskless walrus in thrift store clothes.**"

Everyone had started sniggering.

"That is offensive to all walruses," Jacinda remarked with much attitude in the tone of her voice.

"**He had about three hairs on his head, all combed over his bald scalp, as if that made him handsome or something.**"

"**He managed the Electronics Mega- Mart in Queens, but he stayed home most of the time. I don't know why he hadn't been fired long before.**"

"Probably because he scared everybody half to death!" Percy shivered.

"**He just kept on collecting paychecks, spending the money on cigars that made me nauseous, and on beer, of course. Always beer. Whenever I was home, he expected me to provide his gambling funds. He called that our 'guy secret'. Meaning that if I told mom, he would punch my lights out.**"

"Despicable." Leo frowned.

"**'I don't have any cash,' I told him.**"

"Yay!" Nico smiled.

"**He raised a greasy eyebrow. Gabe could sniff out money like a bloodhound, which was surprising, since his own smell should've covered up everything else.**"

Everyone began to laugh halfheartedly.

"**'You took a taxi from the bus station,' he said. 'Probably paid with a twenty. Got six, seven bucks in change? Somebody expects to live under this roof, he ought to carry his own weight. Am I right, Eddie?'**"

"**Eddie, the super of the apartment building, looked at me with a twinge of sympathy. 'Come on, Gabe,' he said. 'The kid just got here.'**"

"**'Am I **_**right?**_**' Gabe repeated.**"

"**Eddie scowled into his bowl of pretzels. The other two guys passed gas in harmony.**"

"Ugh!" Everyone grumbled.

"**'Fine,' I said. I dug a wad of dollars out of my pocket and threw the money on the table. 'I hope you lose.'**"

"**'Your report card came, brain boy!' he shouted after me. 'I wouldn't act so snooty.'**"

"**I slammed the door to my room, which really wasn't my room. During school months, it was Gabe's 'study'. He didn't study anything in there except three old car magazines, but he loved shoving my stuff in the closet, leaving his muddy boots on the windowsill, and doing his best to make the place smell like his nasty cologne and cigars and stale beer.**"

"I hate the smell of alcohol," Jace cringed. Of course she didn't. When she was young, Jace's mother was an alcoholic. She died when her daughter was just 12 years old. I had been to their apartment before Miss Winsted's death, and it was awful.

"I know," I said, massaging her back

"**Gabe's smell was almost worse than the nightmares about Mrs. Dodds, or the sound of that fruit lady's shears snipping the yarn.**"

"**But as soon as I thought that, my legs felt weak. I remembered Grover's look of panic- how I promised I wouldn't go home without him. A sudden chill rose through me. I felt someone- something-was looking for me right now, maybe pounding its way up the stairs, growing long, horrible talons."**

"Paranoid!" I blurted.

"**Then I heard my mom's voice. 'Percy?'** **She opened the door, and my fears melted.**"

"**My mother can make you feel good just by walking into the room. Her eyes sparkle and they change color in the light. Her smile is as warm as a quilt. She's got a few gray streaks in with her long brown hair, but I never think of her as old.**"

"You were so sweet when you were twelve!" Thalia grinned.

"**When she looks at me, it's like she's seeing all the good things about me, none of the bad. I've never heard her raise her voice or say any unkind word to anyone, not even me or Gabe."**

Percy looked at the book longingly.

"**'Oh, Percy." She hugged me tight. 'I can't believe it. You've grown since Christmas!'**"

"**Her red-white-and-blue Sweet on America uniform smelled and like the best things in the world: chocolate, licorice, and all the other stuff that she sold at the candy shop in Grand Central. She'd brought me a huge bag of 'free samples' the way she always did when I came home.**"

"Aw!" The girls cooed.

"**We sat together on the edge of the bed. While I attacked the blueberry sour strings, she ran her hand through my hair and demanded to know everything that I hadn't put in my letters. She didn't mention anything about my getting expelled. She didn't seem to care about that. But was I okay? Was her little boy doing all right? I told her that she was smothering me, and to lay off and all that, but secretly, I was really, really glad to see her.**"

"**From the other room, Gabe yelled, "Hey, Sally- how about some of that bean dip, huh?"**

"He is just terrible," I scoffed.

"**I gritted my teeth. My mom is the nicest lady in the world. She should've been married to a millionaire, not to some jerk like Gabe. For her sake, I tried to sound upbeat about my last days at Yancy Academy. I told her I wasn't too down about the expulsion. I'd lasted almost the whole year this time. I made some new friends. I'd done pretty well in Latin. And honestly, the fights hadn't been as bad as the headmaster said. I liked Yancy Academy. I really did. I put such a good spin on the year, I almost convinced myself. I started choking up, thinking about Grover and Mr. Brunner. Even Nancy Bobofit suddenly didn't seem so bad.**"

"**Until that trip to the museum…**"

"Were you just saying that?" I asked.

"Yeah…" Percy grinned.

"**'What?' my mom asked. Her eyes tugged at my conscience, trying to pull out the secrets. 'Did something scare you?'**"

"**'No, Mom.'**"

"**I felt bad lying. I wanted to tell her about Mrs. Dodds and the three old ladies with the yarn, but I thought it would sound stupid.**"

"She would have understood" Grover grunted.

"**She pursed her lips. She knew I was holding back, but she didn't push me. 'I have a surprise for you,' she said. 'We're going to the beach.'**"

**My eyes widened. "Montauk?"**

"I love that beach!" Percy smiled again.

"**'Three nights- same cabin.'**"

"**'When?'**"

**She smiled. "As soon as I get changed." I couldn't believe it. My mom and I hadn't been to Montauk the last two summers because Gabe said there wasn't enough money. Gabe appeared in the doorway and growled, "Bean dip, Sally? Didn't you hear me?**"

"Shut up!" I grumbled.

"**I wanted to punch him, but I met my mom's eyes and I understood she was offering me a deal: be nice to Gabe for a little while. Just until she was ready to leave for Montauk. Then we would get out of here.**"

"**'I was on my way, honey,' she told Gabe. "We were talking about the trip.'**"

"**Gabe's eyes got small. "The trip? You mean you were serious about that?**"

"Seriously?" Frank gasped.

"**'I knew it,' I muttered. 'He won't let us go.'**"

"**'Of course he will,' my mom said evenly. 'Your stepfather is just worried about money. That's all. Besides,' she added, 'Gabriel won't have to settle for bean dip. I'll make him enough seven-layer dip for the whole weekend. Guacamole, Sour cream, the works.'**"

"I love that stuff!" Leo cheered, "Wait! Don't give the good dip to Gabe!"

"**Gabe softened a bit. 'So this money for your trip…it comes out of your clothes budget, right?'**"

"Dude!" Jason shouted.

"**'Yes, honey,' my mother said.**"

"**'And you won't take my car anywhere but there and back.'**"

"**'We'll be very careful.'**"

Percy chuckled a little bit, thinking of how the car exploded.

"**Gabe scratched his double chin. 'Maybe if you hurry up with that seven-layer dip…And maybe if the kid apologizes for interrupting my poker game.'**"

"Oh, come on," Thalia complained. "Is it that important?"

"**Maybe if I kick you in your soft spot, I thought. And make you sing soprano for a week.**"

Everyone burst out laughing.

"Do it!" I yelled.

"**But my mom's eyes warned me not to make him mad. Why did she put up with this guy? I wanted to scream. Why did she care about what he thought?**"

"**'I'm sorry,' I muttered. 'I'm really sorry I interrupted your incredibly important poker came. Please go back to it right now.'**"

"**Gabe's eyes narrowed. His tiny brain was probably trying to detect sarcasm in my statement. 'Yeah whatever,' he decided**. **He went back to his game.**"

"**'Thank you, Percy,' my mom said. 'Once we get to Montauk, we'll talk more about…whatever you've forgotten to tell me, okay.'**"

"**For a moment, I thought I saw anxiety in her eyes-the same fear I'd seen in Grover during the bus ride-as if my mom too felt an odd chill in the air. But then her smile returned, and I figured I must have been mistaken. She ruffled my hair and went to make Gabe his seven-layer dip.**"

"**An hour later we were ready to leave.**"

"Hallelujah!" Hazel giggled.

"**Gabe took a break from his poker game long enough to watch me lug my mom's bags to the car. He kept griping and groaning about losing her cooking-and more important- his '78 Camaro-for the whole weekend.**"

"**'Not a scratch on this car, brain boy,' he warned me as I loaded the last bag. 'Not one little scratch.'**"

Percy gave another laugh, but then stopped abruptly and frowned.

"**Like I'd be the one driving. I was twelve. But that didn't matter to Gabe. If a seagull so much as pooped on his paint job, he'd find a way to blame me.**"

"He made me wash the car once because of that…" Percy smiled again.

"**Watching him lumber back toward the apartment building, I got so mad I did something that I can't explain.**"

"**As Gabe reached the doorway, I made the hand gesture I saw Grover make on the bus, a sort of warding off gesture, a clawed hand over my heart, then a shoving movement toward Gabe.**"

Grover yelled out in gratitude. "Yay!"

"**The screen door slammed shut so hard it whacked him in the butt and sent him flying up the staircase as if he'd been shot from cannon.**"

Everyone laughed.

"Take that you bastard!" Jacinda screamed.

"Whoa! I never knew that you had a bad mouth!" Jason grinned. Jacey smiled and nodded.

"**Maybe it was just the wind, or some freak accident with the hinges, but I didn't stay long enough to find out. I got in the Camaro and told my mom to step on it.**"

"**Our rental cabin was on the south shore, way out on the tip of Long Island. It was a little pastel box with faded curtains half sunken into the dunes. There was always sand in the sheets and spiders in the cabinets, and most of the time, the sea was too cold to swim in.**"

Annabeth shivered at the thought of spiders, "Don't plan on me ever going there with you guys," She muttered to Percy.

"Don't worry, I won't" Percy laughed.

"**I loved the place. We'd been going here since I was a baby. My mom had been going even longer. She never exactly said, but I knew the place was special to her. It was the place where she'd met my dad.**"

"Aw!" Piper smiled.

"**As we got closer to Montauk, she seemed to grow younger, years of worry and work disappearing from her face. Her eyes turned the color of the sea. **"

"**We got there at sunset, opened all the cabin's windows, and went through our usual cleaning routine. We walked on the beach, fed blue corn chips to the seagulls, and all the other free samples my mom brought from work.**"

"**I guess I should explain the blue food.**"

"Yep!" Frank and Leo said.

"**See, Gabe had once told my mom that there was no such thing. They had this fight, which seemed like a really small thing at the time. But ever since, my mom went out of her way to eat blue. She baked blue birthday cakes. She mixed blueberry smoothies. She bought blue corn tortilla chips and brought home blue candy from the shop.**"

"Good reason." Leo stated.

"**This-along with keeping her maiden name, Jackson, rather calling herself Mrs. Ugliano-was proof that she wasn't totally suckered by Gabe. She did have a rebellious streak like me.**"

"Only for you, it's not a streak; It's a way of life." Thalia pointed out.

"**When it got dark, we made a fire. We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows. Mom told me stories about when she was a kid, back before her parents died in the plane crash. She told me about the books she wanted to write someday, when she had enough money to quit the candy shop.**"

"**Eventually, I got up the nerve to ask about what was always on my mind whenever we came to Montauk-my father. Mom's eyes went all misty. I figured she would tell me the same things she always did, but I never got tired of hearing them.**"

"**'He was kind, Percy,' she said. "Tall, handsome and powerful. But gentle, too. You have his black hair, you know, and his green eyes.'**"

"**Mom fished a blue jelly bean out of her candy bag. 'I wish he could see you, Percy. He would be so proud.' I wondered how she could say that. What was so great about me? A dyslexic, hyperactive boy with a D+ report card, kicked out of school for the sixth time in six years.**"

"Don't think like that." Hazel sighed sympathetically.

"**'How old was I?' I asked. 'I mean…when he left?'**"

"**She watched the flames. 'He was only with me for one summer, Percy. Right here at this beach. This cabin.'**"

"**'But…he knew me as a baby.'**"

"**'No, honey. He knew I was expecting a baby, but he never saw you. He had to leave before you were born.'**"

"**I tried to square that with the fact that I seemed to remember…something about my father. A warm glow. A smile.**"

"You have the same warm glow about your smile." Annabeth assured Percy

"**I had always assumed he knew me as a baby. My mom had never said outright, but still, I'd felt it must be true. Now to be told that he'd never even seen me… I felt angry at my father. Maybe it was stupid, but I resented him for going on that ocean voyage, for not having the guts to marry my mom. He'd left us, and now we were stuck with Smelly Gabe.**"

"**'Are you going to send me away again?' I asked her. 'To another boarding school?'**"

"**She pulled a marshmallow from the fire. 'I don't know honey.' Her voice was heavy. 'I think…I think we'll have to do something.**"

"**'Because you don't want me around?' I regretted the words as soon as they were out.**"

"You should! Respect your mother!" Reyna scolded.

"**My mom's eyes welled with tears. She took my hand, squeezed it tight. 'Oh, Percy, no. I-I **_**have **_**to, honey. For your own good. I have to send you away.'**"

"**Her words reminded me of what Mr. Brunner had said-that it was best for me to leave Yancy. 'Because I'm not normal?' I said.**"

"It's not that bad being abnormal," Jacinda commented.

"**'You say that as if it's a bad thing, Percy. But you don't realize how important you are. I thought Yancy Academy would be far enough away. I thought you'd finally be safe.'**"

"**'Safe from what?'**"

"**She met my eyes, and a flood of memories came back to me-all the weird, scary things that had ever happened that I tried to forget.**"

Percy shivered from the thought of memories.

"**During third grade, a man in a black trench coat had stalked me on the playground. When the teachers threatened to call the police, he went away growling, but no one believed me when I told them that under his broad-brimmed hat, the man had one eye, right in the middle of his head.**"

"He's watching you," I whispered in a creepy tone.

"**Before that-a really early memory. I was in preschool, and a teacher accidentally put me down for a nap in a cot that a snake had slithered into.**"

Leo took a deep breath.

"**My mom screamed when she came to pick me up and found me playing with a limp, scaly rope I'd somehow managed to strangle to death with my meaty toddler hands. In every single school, something unsafe, and I was forced to move.**"

"**I knew I should tell mom about the old ladies at the fruit stand, and Mrs. Dodds at the art museum, about my weird hallucination that I had sliced my math teacher into dust with a sword. But I couldn't make myself tell her. I had a strange feeling the news would end our trip to Montauk, and I didn't want that.**"

Grover made a strangling motion with his hands, pointed at Percy.

"**'I've tried to keep you as close to me as I could,' my mom said. 'They told me that was a mistake. But there's one other option, Percy-the place where your father wanted to send you. And I just…I just can't stand to do it.'**"

"**'My father wanted me to go to a special school?'**"

"**'Not a school,' she said softly. 'A summer camp.'**"

"Not just a summer camp," Leo informed Percy

"I know!" Percy smiled.

"**My head was spinning. Why would my dad-who hadn't even stayed long enough to see me born-talk to my mom about a summer camp? And if it was so important, why hadn't she ever mentioned it before?**"

"**'I'm sorry, Percy,' she said, seeing the look in my eyes. 'But I can't talk about it. I-I couldn't send you to that place. It might mean saying good-bye to you for good.'**"

"**'For good? But if it's only a summer camp…'**"

"**She turned toward the fire, and I knew from her expression that if I asked her antmore questions, she would start to cry."**

**"That night, I had a vivid dream."**

"That is never good," Jason shuddered.

"**It was storming on the beach, and two beautiful animals, a white horse and a golden eagle, were trying to kill each other at the edge of the surf. The eagle swooped down and slashed the horse's muzzle with huge talons. The horse reared up and kicked at the eagle's wings. As they fought, the ground rumbled, and a monstrous voice chuckled somewhere beneath the earth, goading the animals to fight harder.**"

I frowned and looked at my hands.

"**I ran toward them, knowing I had to stop them from killing each other, but I was running in slow motion. I knew I would be too late. I saw the eagle dive down, its beak aimed at the horse' s wide eyes, and I screamed **_**No!**_** I woke with a start."**

"**Outside, it was really storming, the kind of storm that cracks trees and blows down houses. There was no horse or eagle on the beach, just lightning making false daylight, and twenty-foot waves pounding the dunes like artillery.**"

"**With the next thunderclap, my mom woke. She sat up, eyes wide, and said, 'Hurricane,'**"

"**I knew that was crazy. Long island never sees hurricanes this early in the summer. But the ocean seemed to have forgotten. Over the roar of the wind, I heard a distant bellow, an angry, tortured sound that made my hair stand on end. Then, a much closer noise, like mallets in the sand. A desperate voice-someone yelling, pounding on our cabin door.**"

"_monster_" Nico muttered.

"**My mother sprang out of bed in her nightgown and threw open the lock. Grover stood framed in the doorway against a backdrop of pouring rain.**"

"Not quite." Percy muttered back.

"**'Searching all night,' he gasped. 'What were you thinking?' my mother looked at me in terror-not scared of Grover, but of why he'd come.**"

"**'Percy,' she said, shouting to be heard over the rain. 'What happened at school? What didn't you tell me?'** **I was frozen, looking at Grover. I couldn't understand what I was seeing."**

"**'**_**O Zeu kai alloi theoi!**_**' he yelled. 'It's right behind me! Didn't you tell her?'**"

"Translation: O Zeus and other Gods" Grover explained.

"**I was too shocked to register that he'd just cursed in Ancient Greek, and I understood him perfectly. I was too shocked to wonder how Grover had gotten here by himself in the middle of the night. Because Grover didn't have his pants on-**"

"**-and where his legs should be…where his legs should be…**"

"Spit it out buddy!" Frank encouraged.

"**My mom looked at me sternly and talked in a tone she'd never used before: '**_**Percy**_**. Tell me **_**now!**_'"

"**I stammered something about the old ladies at the fruit stand, and Mrs. Dodds, and my mom stared at me, her face deathly pale in the flashes of lightning. She grabbed her purse, tossed me my rain jacket, and said, 'Get to the car. Both of you. **_**Go!**__'_"

"To camp!" Percy cheered. He suddenly paled and the grin whipped from his sullen face.

"**Grover ran for the Camaro-but he wasn't running, exactly. He was trotting, shaking his shiny hindquarters, and suddenly his story about a muscular disorder in his legs made sense to me. I understood how he could run so fast and still limp when he walked.** **Because where his feet should be, there were no feet. There were cloven hooves.**"

"Gasp!" I said mockingly.

Percy's eyes narrowed. "Shut up." He growled.

I rolled my eyes and Percy tore the book from Jason's hands.


	5. Bullfighting

**Sorry that it has been a while. Been pretty busy.**

**Disclaimer: I do NOT own Percy Jackson. Any material in BOLD is from the Lightning Thief book, which was written by Rick Riordan. **

**Chapter 4 My Mother Teaches me Bullfighting**

Percy paled but didn't comment. He took a deep breath and waited a moment before beginning to read.

**We tore through the night along dark country roads. Wind slammed against the Camaro. Rain lashed the wind shield. I didn't know how my mom could see anything, but she kept her foot on the gas.**

**Every time there was a flash of lightning, I looked at Grover sitting next to me in the backseat and I wondered if I'd gone insane, or if he was wearing some kind of shag-carpet pants.**

"I want shag-carpet pants!" said Leo

"There's no such thing!" said Piper

**But, no, the smell was one I remembered from kindergarten field trips to the petting zoo— lanolin, like from wool. The smell of a wet barnyard animal.**

**All I could think to say was, "So, you and my mom... know each other?" Graver's eyes flitted to the rearview mirror, though there were no cars behind us. "Not exactly," he said. "I mean, we've never met in person. But she knew I was watching you."**

"Stalker…" I whispered.

**"Watching me?"**

**"Keeping tabs on you. Making sure you were okay. But I wasn't faking being your friend," he added hastily. "I _am _your friend."**

**"Urm ... what _are _you, exactly?"**

**"That doesn't matter right now."**

**"It doesn't matter? From the waist down, my best friend is a donkey—"**

"That was offensive." Grover said.

**Grover let out a sharp, throaty "_Blaa-ha-ha_!"**

**I'd heard him make that sound before, but I'd always assumed it was a nervous laugh. Now I realized it was more of an irritated bleat.**

**"Goat!" he cried.**

**"What?"**

**"I'm a _goat _from the waist down."**

"It doesn't matter as long as you know that he is not a donkey." Jace said, trying to lighten the tense mood.

**"You just said it didn't matter."**

**"**_**Blaa-ha-ha**_**!** **There are satyrs who would trample you under hoof for such an insult!"**

**"Whoa. Wait. Satyrs. You mean like ... Mr. Brunner's myths?"**

"Myths?" Nico raised an eyebrow.

**"Were those old ladies at the fruit stand a _myth, _Percy? Was Mrs. Dodds a myth?"**

**"So you _admit _there was a Mrs. Dodds!"**

"No, he is just telling you that she was not a myth." Thalia said sarcastically.

**"Of course."**

**"Then why—"**

**"The less you knew, the fewer monsters you'd attract," Grover said, like that should be perfectly obvious. "We put Mist over the humans' eyes. We hoped you'd think the Kindly One was a hallucination. But it was no good. You started to realize who you are."**

**"Who I—wait a minute, what do you mean?"**

Laughter started as a reaction to Percy's slowness.

**The weird bellowing noise rose up again somewhere behind us, closer than before. Whatever was chasing us was still on our trail.**

**"Percy," my mom said, "there's too much to explain and not enough time. We have to get you to safety."**

**"Safety from what? Who's after me?"**

"Everything." Thalia said.

**"Oh, nobody much," Grover said, obviously still miffed about the donkey comment. "Just the Lord of the Dead and a few of his blood-thirstiest minions."**

**"Grover!"**

**"Sorry, Mrs. Jackson. Could you drive faster, please?"**

"If only she went a little faster…" Percy mumbled to himself.

**I tried to wrap my mind around what was happening, but I couldn't do it. I knew this wasn't a dream. I had no imagination. I could never dream up something this weird.**

**My mom made a hard left. We swerved onto a narrower road, racing past darkened farmhouses and wooded hills and PICK YOUR OWN STRAWBERRIES signs on white picket fences.**

**"Where are we going?" I asked.**

**"The summer camp I told you about." My mother's voice was tight; she was trying for my sake not to be scared. "The place your father wanted to send you."**

**"The place you didn't want me to go."**

**"Please, dear," my mother begged. "This is hard enough. Try to understand. You're in danger."**

**"Because some old ladies cut yarn."**

"Well, when you put it that way… Yep." I smiled. Percy winced and continued.

**"Those weren't old ladies," Grover said. "Those were the Fates. Do you know what it means—the fact they appeared in front of you? They only do that when you're about to ... when someone's about to die."**

"Grover!" Annabeth scoffed.

"I was a little preoccupied to think too hard about what I was saying!" Grover defended.

**"Whoa. You said 'you.'"**

**"No I didn't. I said 'someone.'"**

"Terrible liar." Connor remarcked.

**"You meant 'you.' As in _me._"**

**"I meant _you, _like 'someone.' Not you, _you._"**

"Now you're just being confusing," Frank said.

**Boys!" my mom said.**

"Poor Sally…" I muttered. Just then, I realized what was about to happen.

**She pulled the wheel hard to the right, and I got a glimpse of a figure she'd swerved to avoid—a dark fluttering shape now lost behind us in the storm.**

**"What was that?" I asked.**

**"We're almost there," my mother said, ignoring my question.**

**"Another mile. Please. Please. Please."**

Percy began choking up.

**I didn't know where _there _was, but I found myself leaning forward in the car, anticipating, wanting us to arrive.**

**Outside, nothing but rain and darkness—the kind of empty countryside you get way out on the tip of Long Island. I thought about Mrs. Dodds and the moment when she'd changed into the thing with pointed teeth and leathery wings. My limbs went numb from delayed shock. She really _hadn't _been human. She'd meant to kill me.**

"Not necessarily," Annabeth comforted him.

**Then I thought about Mr. Brunner ... and the sword he had thrown me. Before I could ask Grover about that, the hair rose on the back of my neck. There was a blinding flash, a jaw-rattling _boom!, _and our car exploded. I remember feeling weightless, like I was being crushed, fried, and hosed down all at the same time.**

"Not a scratch," I reminded them all. That made them actually laugh.

**I peeled my forehead off the back of the driver's seat and said, "Ow."**

**"Percy!" my mom shouted.**

**"I'm okay..."**

**I tried to shake off the daze. I wasn't dead. The car hadn't really exploded. We'd swerved into a ditch. Our driver's-side doors were wedged in the mud. The roof had cracked open like an eggshell and rain was pouring in.**

"If I were you, that is not what I would be paying attention to at the moment," Jace commented.

**Lightning. **

"DAD!" Yelled Jason.

"You could have killed him, and if you did, he wouldn't be there to sort out all of you're issues!" Thalia scolded.

**That was the only explanation. We'd been blasted right off the road. Next to me in the backseat was a big motionless lump. "Grover!"**

**He was slumped over, blood trickling from the side of his mouth.**

**I shook his furry hip, thinking, No! Even if you are half barnyard animal, you're my best friend and I don't want you to die!**

Grover blushed redder than a tomato.

**Then he groaned "Food," and I knew there was hope.**

"Really dude? You're half dead and you say "food"?" Nico pointed out. Grover said nothing.

**"Percy," my mother said, "we have to ..." Her voice faltered.**

**I looked back. In a flash of lightning, through the mud-spattered rear windshield, I saw a figure lumbering toward us on the shoulder of the road. The sight of it made my skin crawl. It was a dark silhouette of a huge guy, like a football player. He seemed to be holding a blanket over his head. His top half was bulky and fuzzy. His upraised hands made it look like he had horns.**

"Sure, that's what it is!" Jacinda exclaimed.

**I swallowed hard. "Who is—"**

**"Percy," my mother said, deadly serious. "Get out of the car."**

**My mother threw herself against the driver's-side door. It was jammed shut in the mud. I tried mine. Stuck too. I looked up desperately at the hole in the roof. It might've been an exit, but the edges were sizzling and smoking.**

**"Climb out the passenger's side!" my mother told me. "Percy—you have to run. Do you see that big tree?"**

"Run Forest, run!" I quoted. Annabeth smiled.

"I love Forest Gump!" She said.

_**"What?"**_

**Another flash of lightning, and through the smoking hole in the roof I saw the tree she meant: a huge, White House Christmas tree-sized pine at the crest of the nearest hill.**

**"That's the property line," my mom said. "Get over that hill and you'll see a big farmhouse down in the valley. Run and don't look back. Yell for help. Don't stop until you reach the door."**

**"Mom, you're coming too."**

"Just go! She can't come!" Jacinda yelled her voice filled with fear.

**Her face was pale, her eyes as sad as when she looked at the ocean.**

**"No!" I shouted. "You _are _coming with me. Help me carry Grover."**

**"Food!" Grover moaned, a little louder.**

Everyone chuckled slightly, except Percy who looked like he was on the verge of tears.

**The man with the blanket on his head kept coming toward us, making his grunting, snorting noises. As he got closer, I realized he _couldn't _be holding a blanket over his head, because his hands—huge meaty hands—were swinging at his sides. There was no blanket. Meaning the bulky, fuzzy mass that was too big to be his head ... was his head. And the points that looked like horns…**

Now, the others realized what this man was and were biting their lips, hoping that they would be alright.

Percy couldn't read more, this I realized. I leaned over and took the book from his hands. He tried to pull it back but then realized that it would be better for us all.

I read from where Percy left off.

**"He doesn't want _us_," my mother told me. "He wants _you. _Besides, I can't cross the property line."**

**"But..."**

**"We don't have time, Percy. Go. Please."**

**I got mad, —mad at my mother,** **at Grover the goat,**

**at the thing with horns that was lumbering toward us slowly and deliberately like, like a bull.**

"That's because he's part bull," said Piper.

"Oh he that know now," said Annabeth, "Seeing that this is just the first fight with the Minotaur."

Jason sat gawked at Annabeth silently. There had been so many comparisons between him and the Son of the Sea, but now, he thought that there was nothing to compare to. He was nothing against Percy.

**I climbed across Grover and pushed the door open into the rain. "We're going together. Come on, Mom."**

**"I told you—"**

**"Mom! I am not leaving you. Help me with Grover."**

**I didn't wait for her answer. I scrambled outside, dragging Grover from the car. He was surprisingly light, but I couldn't have carried him very far if my mom hadn't come to my aid.**

**Together, we draped Grover's arms over our shoulders and started stumbling uphill through wet waist-high grass.**

**Glancing back, I got my first clear look at the monster. He was seven feet tall, easy, his arms and legs like something from the cover of _Muscle Man _magazine—bulging biceps and triceps and a bunch of other 'ceps, all stuffed like baseballs under vein-webbed skin. He wore no clothes except under wear**

Everyone started laughing, even Percy.

— **I mean, bright white Fruit of the Looms—**

"Does it make a difference?" Reyna asked.

"It made it funnier," Percy said

Everyone laughed even harder.

**which would've looked funny, except that the top half of his body was so scary. Coarse brown hair started at about his belly button and got thicker as it reached his shoulders.**

**His neck was a mass of muscle and fur leading up to his enormous head, which had a snout as long as my arm, snotty nostrils with a gleaming brass ring, cruel black eyes, and horns—enormous black-and-white horns with points you just couldn't get from an electric sharpener.**

"Really? Electric sharpeners at a time like this?" Thalia questioned.

**I recognized the monster, all right. He had been in one of the first stories Mr. Brunner told us. But he couldn't be real.**

**I blinked the rain out of my eyes. "That's—"**

**"Pasiphae's son," my mother said.**

**"I wish I'd known how badly they want to kill you."**

"That'd be lovely to hear when you are already confused and fearing for your life," I remarked.

**"But he's the Min—"**

**"Don't say his name," she warned. "Names have power."**

**The pine tree was still way too far—a hundred yards uphill at least.**

**I glanced behind me again.**

**The bull-man hunched over our car, looking in the windows—or not looking, exactly. More like snuffling, nuzzling. I wasn't sure why he bothered, since we were only about fifty feet away.**

**"Food?" Grover moaned.**

**"Shhh," I told him. "Mom, what's he doing? Doesn't he see us?"**

**"His sight and hearing are terrible," she said. "He goes by smell. But he'll figure out where we are soon enough."**

**As if on cue, the bull-man bellowed in rage. He picked up Gabe's Camaro by the torn roof, the chassis creaking and groaning. He raised the car over his head and threw it down the road. It slammed into the wet asphalt and skidded in a shower of sparks for about half a mile before coming to a stop. The gas tank exploded.**

"Is it scratched yet? I sure hope not!" Travis laughed.

**_Not a scratch, _I remembered Gabe saying. Oops.**

Everyone laughed.

**"Percy," my mom said. "When he sees us, he'll charge. Wait until the last second, then jump out of the way— directly sideways. He can't change directions very well once he's charging. Do you understand?"**

"That's pretty smart of her…" Annabeth frowned.

"Too bad it didn't work," Percy said quietly

**"How do you know all this?"**

**"I've been worried about an attack for a long time. I should have expected this. I was selfish, keeping you near me."**

"Ms. Jackson is the most unselfish person ever," said Thalia, with everyone who met her agreeing.

**"Keeping me near you? But—"**

**Another bellow of rage, and the bull-man started tromping uphill.**

**He'd smelled us.**

**The pine tree was only a few more yards, but the hill was getting steeper and slicker, and Grover wasn't getting any lighter.**

**The bull-man closed in. Another few seconds and he'd be on top of us.**

**My mother must've been exhausted, but she shouldered Grover. "Go, Percy! Separate! Remember what I said."**

**I didn't want to split up, but I had the feeling she was right—it was our only chance. I sprinted to the left, turned, and saw the creature bearing down on me. His black eyes glowed with hate. He reeked like rotten meat.**

"Monsters smell awful!" Jacey announce, as if we didn't know already.

**He lowered his head and charged, those razor-sharp horns aimed straight at my chest.**

**The fear in my stomach made me want to bolt, but that wouldn't work. I could never outrun this thing.**

**So I held my ground, and at the last moment, I jumped to the side.**

**The bull-man stormed past like a freight train, then bellowed with frustration and turned, but not toward me this time, toward my mother, who was setting Grover down in the grass.**

A tear streaked down Percy's face.

**We'd reached the crest of the hill. Down the other side I could see a valley, just as my mother had said, and the lights of a farmhouse glowing yellow through the rain. But that was half a mile away. We'd never make it.**

"Stop being pessimistic," said Leo

**The bull-man grunted, pawing the ground. He kept eyeing my mother, who was now retreating slowly downhill, back toward the road, trying to lead the monster away from Grover.**

**"Run, Percy!" she told me. "I can't go any farther. Run!"**

**But I just stood there, frozen in fear, as the monster charged her. She tried to sidestep, as she'd told me to do, but the monster had learned his lesson. His hand shot out and grabbed her by the neck as she tried to get away. He lifted her as she struggled, kicking and pummeling the air.**

I read that paragraph a bit faster than the others to escape dwelling on the sad moments.

**"Mom!"**

**She caught my eyes, managed to choke out one last word: "Go!"**

**Then, with an angry roar, the monster closed his fists around my mother's neck, and she dissolved before my eyes, melting into light, a shimmering golden form, as if she were a holographic projection. A blinding flash, and she was simply ... gone.**

Silence. The only person that didn't look phased was Jacinda, but she was weird like that. You could never tell what she was thinking. She hid her emotions from outsiders and always had.

Jace, being her strong self took the book from me and steadily read on.

**"No!"**

**Anger replaced my fear. Newfound strength burned in my limbs—the same rush of energy I'd gotten when Mrs. Dodds grew talons.**

**The bull-man bore down on Grover, who lay helpless in the grass. The monster hunched over, snuffling my best friend, as if he were about to lift Grover up and make him dissolve too.**

**I couldn't allow that.**

**I stripped off my red rain jacket.**

**"Hey!" I screamed, waving the jacket, running to one side of the monster. "Hey, stupid! Ground beef!"**

"Okay so, what we have learned today is that Grover needs lying lessons and Percy needs to learn how to properly insult people." Nico noted

**"Raaaarrrrr!" The monster turned toward me, shaking his meaty fists.**

**I had an idea—a stupid idea, but better than no idea at all.**

"Oh no… His ideas are rubbish," Thalia facepalmed.

**I put my back to the big pine tree and waved my red jacket in front of the bull-man, thinking I'd jump out of the way at the last moment.**

**But it didn't happen like that.**

"It never does" said Annabeth.

**The bull-man charged too fast, his arms out to grab me whichever way I tried to dodge.**

**Time slowed down.**

**My legs tensed. I couldn't jump sideways, so I leaped straight up, kicking off from the creature's head, using it as a springboard, turning in midair, and landing on his neck.**

"Wow," said Jason, "you're amazing!"

Percy blushed, "Oh, that's not all he can do," said Hazel.

**How did I do that?**

**I didn't have time to figure it out. A millisecond later, the monster's head slammed into the tree and the impact nearly knocked my teeth out.**

**The bull-man staggered around, trying to shake me. I locked my arms around his horns to keep from being thrown. Thunder and lightning were still going strong. The rain was in my eyes. The smell of rotten meat burned my nostrils.**

**The monster shook himself around and bucked like a rodeo bull. He should have just backed up into the tree and smashed me flat, but I was starting to realize that this thing had only one gear: forward.**

**Meanwhile, Grover started groaning in the grass. I wanted to yell at him to shut up, but the way I was getting tossed around, if I opened my mouth I'd bite my own tongue off.**

"That would hurt…" Frank yawned.

**"Food!" Grover moaned.**

**The bull-man wheeled toward him, pawed the ground again, and got ready to charge. I thought about how he had squeezed the life out of my mother, made her disappear in a flash of light,** **and rage filled me like high-octane fuel. I got both hands around one horn and I pulled backward with all my might. The monster tensed, gave a surprised grunt, then—**_**snap!**_

All of the 'foreigners' stared at the weeping son of Poseidon, awestruck.

**The bull-man screamed and flung me through the air. I landed flat on my back in the grass. My head smacked against a rock. When I sat up, my vision was blurry, but I had a horn in my hands, a ragged bone weapon the size of a knife.**

**The monster charged.**

**Without thinking, I rolled to one side and came up kneeling. As the monster barreled past, I drove the broken horn straight into his side, right up under his furry rib cage.**

Everyone cheered, except the very depressed looking Percy Jackson.

**The bull-man roared in agony. He flailed, clawing at his chest, then began to disintegrate—not like my mother, in a flash of golden light, but like crumbling sand, blown away in chunks by the wind, the same way Mrs. Dodds had burst apart.**

**The monster was gone.**

**The rain had stopped. The storm still rumbled, but only in the distance. I smelled like livestock and my knees were shaking. My head felt like it was splitting open. I was weak and scared and trembling with grief. I'd just seen my mother vanish. I wanted to lie down and cry, but there was Grover, needing my help, so I managed to haul him up and stagger down into the valley, toward the lights of the farm house. I was crying, calling for my mother, **

Everyone felt bad for him, even me. Like I said before, even though my mother was a nutcase, I would hate for anything to ever happen to her.

**but I held on to Grover—I wasn't going to let him go.**

"You are the most loyal person in the world," Jason decided.

**The last thing I remember is collapsing on a wooden porch, looking up at a ceiling fan circling above me, moths flying around a yellow light, and the stern faces of a familiar-looking bearded man and a pretty girl, her blond hair curled like a princess's.**

Annabeth grinned mischievously at the black hair boy. "You really thought that?"

Percy looked up at her, "Yep." Annabeth looked extremely proud of herself.

**They both looked down at me, and the girl said, "He's the one. He must be."**

"Annabeth is hearing wedding bells already!" Thalia giggled.

**"Silence, Annabeth," the man said. "He's still conscious. Bring him inside."**


	6. Pinochle with a Horse

Before anyone could comment on the depressing chapter, I heard the loud giggles of little girl. It sounded distinctly like Annabeth when she was young. The doors flew open once again, this time, on the outside stood a small blonde child. She had long, curly hair and pale eyes.

"Who's she?" Jacey said distastefully.

"My name is Annabeth Chase." The little girl said matter-of-factly.

"How old are you?" Said current Annabeth.

"I'm eight."

I was confused. Why did we have two Annabeths?

"The gods must have sent her." Thalia said.

"Thal?" Little Annie questioned.

Thalia explained to her that she had a theory that the gods brought Annie in from the past to read the books with us. **(A/N: I'll be calling little Annabeth Annie from now on!**)

We told her what was happening in the book and Leo started reading.

"**I Play Pinochle With a Horse" **Leo said.

"Chiron." Percy explained.

**I had weird dreams full of barnyard animals. Most of them wanted to kill me. The rest wanted food.**

"That's not weird at all…" I said.

The room was silent for a short moment before it was filled with crazy laughter.

**I must've woken up several times, but what I heard and saw made no sense, so I just passed out again. I remember lying in a soft bed, being spoon-fed something that tasted like buttered popcorn, only it was pudding. The girl with curly blond hair hovered over me, smirking as she scraped drips off my chin with the spoon.**

The girls cooed. Annabeth blushed. Percy made his eyebrows do a little creepy dance.

"Cut that out dude!" I yelled. Perce turned to me and did it again.

"Luke?" Annie asked. "You're old!"

I tried to contain my laughter but just couldn't do it. I laughed so hard that no noise came. Jace giggled at the sight of this.

Annie crossed her arms, glaring at Jacinda as she played with my hair.

**When she saw my eyes open, she asked, "What will happen at the summer solstice?"**

**I managed to croak, "What?"**

**She looked around, as if afraid someone would over hear. "What's going on? What was stolen? We've only got a few weeks!"**

**"I'm sorry," I mumbled, "I don't..."**

**Somebody knocked on the door, and the girl quickly filled my mouth with pudding.**

We all laughed. "That's one way to get Percy to shut up. Feed him." Thalia gasped between giggles.

**The next time I woke up, the girl was gone.**

"You're missing her already!" Nico joked. Annabeth grinned proudly. Annie gagged.

**A husky blond dude, like a surfer, stood in the corner of the bedroom keeping watch over me. He had blue eyes- at least a dozen of them- on his cheeks, his forehead, the backs of his hands.**

"Um… I've seen a few strange things in my time, but that has got to be the most bizarre thing I have ever heard." Frank said skeptically.

"Is he still there?" I asked.

"What do you mean 'is he still there'? You've been there all your life!" Annie said. I pursed my lips and shook my head.

**When I finally came around for good, there was nothing weird about my surroundings, except that they were nicer than I was used to. I was sitting in a deck chair on a huge porch, gazing across a meadow at green hills in the distance. The breeze smelled like strawberries. There was a blanket over my legs, a pillow behind my neck. All that was great, but my mouth felt like a scorpion had been using it for a nest.**

"Not scorpions!" I exclaimed.

"No. Not yet." Percy smiled.

**My tongue was dry and nasty and every one of my teeth hurt.**

**On the table next to me was a tall drink. It looked like iced apple juice, with a green straw and a paper parasol stuck through a maraschino cherry.**

"Welcome to Paradise, the place where you could be killed at any minute!" Jason laughed to himself.

**My hand was so weak I almost dropped the glass once I got my fingers around it.**

**"Careful," a familiar voice said.**

**Grover was leaning against the porch railing, looking like he hadn't slept in a week.**

**Under one arm, he cradled a shoe box. He was wearing blue jeans, Converse hi-tops and a bright orange T-shirt that said CAMP HALF-BLOOD. Just plain old Grover, Not the goat boy.**

Everyone laughed.

**So maybe I'd had a nightmare. Maybe my mom was okay. We were still on vacation, and we'd stopped here at this big house for some reason. And...**

**"You saved my life," Grover said. "I... well, the least I could do ... I went back to the hill. I thought you might want this."**

**Reverently, he placed the shoe box in my lap.**

**Inside was a black-and-white bull's horn, the base jagged from being broken off, the tip splattered with dried blood. It hadn't been a nightmare.**

"The Minotaur is one of the few monsters that bleed. Since it is part human, it has blood producing genetics in its body." Annabeth said to us.

"Okay…" Travis remarked rudely.

**"The Minotaur," I said. **

"Um… Percy, that's not a good idea," Annie said.

"Annie is pretty smart." Leo sighed.

**"Urn, Percy, it isn't a good idea-"**

"Annie thinks like a goat." Jace said lightly.

"At least I do think, unlike other human beings in this room," Annie crossly.

Jacey almost shot back at her but I pulled her in close to me. "You're arguing with an eight year old. Is it really worth the trouble?" I whispered.

**"That's what they call him in the Greek myths, isn't it?" I demanded. "The Minotaur. Half man, half bull."**

**Grover shifted uncomfortably. "You've been out for two days. How much do you remember?"**

**"My mom. Is she really ..."**

**He looked down.**

Present Grover did just that.

**I stared across the meadow. There were groves of trees, a winding stream, acres of strawberries spread out under the blue sky. The valley was surrounded by rolling hills, and the tallest one, directly in front of us, was the one with the huge pine tree on top. Even that looked beautiful in the sunlight.**

**My mother was gone. The whole world should be black and cold. Nothing should look beautiful.**

"That's deep," Reyna said, "for Perseus Jackson."

**"I'm sorry," Grover sniffled. "I'm a failure. I'm- I'm the worst satyr in the world."**

"It must have been opposite day." Jacinda said once she recoiled from her squabble with Annie. "He meant to say 'I'm a huge success. I'm the best satyr in the world!'"

**He moaned, stomping his foot so hard it came off. I mean, the Converse hi-top came off. The inside was filled with Styrofoam, except for a hoof-shaped hole.**

**"Oh, Styx!" he mumbled.**

**Thunder rolled across the clear sky.**

"Zeus is so melodramatic." Percy stated.

**As he struggled to get his hoof back in the fake foot, I thought, Well, that settles it.**

**Grover was a satyr. I was ready to bet that if I shaved his curly brown hair, I'd find tiny horns on his head.**

**But I was too miserable to care that satyrs existed, or even minotaurs. All that meant was my mom really had been squeezed into nothingness, dissolved into yellow light.**

**I was alone. An orphan. I would have to live with ... Smelly Gabe?**

"Gods no! Poseidon would do _something_ before that happened." I said.

**No. That would never happen. I would live on the streets first. I would pretend I was seventeen and join the army. I'd do something.**

**Grover was still sniffling. The poor kid- poor goat, satyr, whatever- looked as if he expected to be hit.**

**I said, "It wasn't your fault."**

**"Yes, it was. I was supposed to protect you."**

**"Did my mother ask you to protect me?"**

**"No. But that's my job. I'm a keeper. At least... I was."**

**"But why ..." I suddenly felt dizzy, my vision swimming.**

**"Don't strain yourself," Grover said. "Here." He helped me hold my glass and put the straw to my lips.**

**I recoiled at the taste, because I was expecting apple juice. It wasn't that at all. It was chocolate-chip cookies. Liquid cookies.**

The room filled with "yum" and "Gross!" But Connor Stoll was the loudest, yelling "We should invent that too!" meaning in addition to his liquid Cheetos.

**And not just any cookies- my mom's homemade blue chocolate-chip cookies, buttery and hot, with the chips still melting. Drinking it, my whole body felt warm and good, full of energy. My grief didn't go away, but I felt as if my mom had just brushed her hand against my cheek, given me a cookie the way she used to when I was small, and told me everything was going to be okay.**

**Before I knew it, I'd drained the glass. I stared into it, sure I'd just had a warm drink, but the ice cubes hadn't even melted.**

"If you wanted it to cold, you could have made it cold." Annie said. Percy looked away but I could see him roll his eyes.

**"Was it good?" Grover asked.**

**I nodded.**

**"What did it taste like?" He sounded so wistful, I felt guilty.**

**"Sorry," I said. "I should've let you taste."**

"NO!" Several people yelled.

**His eyes got wide. "No! That's not what I meant. I just... wondered."**

**"Chocolate-chip cookies," I said. "My mom's. Homemade."**

"That made me miss her ten times more!" Percy sighed.

**He sighed. "And how do you feel?"**

**"Like I could throw Nancy Bobofit a hundred yards."**

Everyone laughed.

**"That's good," he said. "That's good. I don't think you could risk drinking any more of that stuff"**

**"What do you mean?"**

**He took the empty glass from me gingerly, as if it were dynamite, and set it back on the table. "Come on. Chiron and Mr. D are waiting."**

**The porch wrapped all the way around the farmhouse.**

**My legs felt wobbly, trying to walk that far. Grover offered to carry the Minotaur horn, but I held on to it. I'd paid for that souvenir the hard way. I wasn't going to let it go.**

**As we came around the opposite end of the house, I caught my breath.**

**We must've been on the north shore of Long Island, because on this side of the house, the valley marched all the way up to the water, which glittered about a mile in the distance. Between here and there, I simply couldn't process everything I was seeing. The landscape was dotted with buildings that looked like ancient Greek architectureâ€"an open-air pavilion, an amphitheater, a circular arenaâ€"except that they all looked brand new, their white marble columns sparkling in the sun. In a nearby sandpit, a dozen high school-age kids and satyrs played volleyball. Canoes glided across a small lake. Kids in bright orange T-shirts like Grover's were chasing each other around a cluster of cabins nestled in the woods. Some shot targets at an archery range. Others rode horses down a wooded trail, and, unless I was hallucinating, some of their horses had wings.**

"Let's just say you were hallucinating." Connor said.

"But I wasn't…" Percy defended.

"I know, but it's funny!" Connor snickered.

**Down at the end of the porch, two men sat across from each other at a card table. The blond-haired girl who'd spoon-fed me popcorn-flavored pudding was leaning on the porch rail next to them.**

"Another lovely invention. Popcorn-flavored pudding!" Travis beamed.

Piper and Jacey face-palmed.

**The man facing me was small, but porky. He had a red nose, big watery eyes, and curly hair so black it was almost purple. He looked like those paintings of baby angels- what do you call them, hubbubs?**

"Hubbubs?" Jacinda question. "A hubbub is a loud and confused noise!"

Annie scowled. "Since when are you the smart one?"

Jacey blinked twice before lightly snuggling into my chest, as if to say "Who cares that I'm smart? I got the guy."

"Let it go," I whispered.

**No, cherubs. That's it.**

"How could you get those confused?" Annabeth asked.

"They sound… similar." Percy blushed.

"Since when?" Thalia exclaimed.

**He looked like a cherub who'd turned middle-aged in a trailer park.**

**He wore a tiger-pattern Hawaiian shirt, and he would've fit right in at one of Gabe's poker parties, except I got the feeling this guy could've out-gambled even my stepfather.**

"Probably could." I told Percy.

**"That's Mr. D," Grover murmured to me. "He's the camp director. Be polite. The girl, that's Annabeth Chase. She's just a camper,**

"Just?" Annie and Annabeth chimed.

**but she's been here longer than just about anybody. **

"Ehem!" Jacinda falsely cleared her throat.

**And you already know Chiron..."**

"But you hadn't met," Nico questioned.

"Hang on!" Leo yelled

**He pointed at the guy whose back was to me.**

**First, I realized he was sitting in the wheelchair. Then I recognized the tweed jacket, the thinning brown hair, the scraggly beard.**

**"Mr. Brunner!" I cried.**

"Oh!" Several of the latecomers to camp sighed along with all of the Romans.

**The Latin teacher turned and smiled at me. His eyes had that mischievous glint they sometimes got in class when he pulled a pop quiz and made all the multiple choice answers B.**

"He would do that?" Piper asked.

"Hades yeah!" Percy chuckled.

"That doesn't seem like a very… Chirony thing to do." Jacey said.

I laughed, "Did you just say Chirony?"

"Yes. Yes I did. You got a problem with that?"

I sighed and shook my head. Annie looked puzzled, "And you used it as an-"

"Adjective? Sure! I can turn immortal's names into adjectives if I want to." Jace interrupted. Thunder rolled. Zeus didn't like that. "Actually, that's probably not a good plan."

"No, not if you want to live to see tomorrow." Jason grinned.

**"Ah, good, Percy," he said. "Now we have four for pinochle."**

**He offered me a chair to the right of Mr. D, who looked at me with bloodshot eyes and heaved a great sigh. "Oh, I suppose I must say it. Welcome to Camp Half-Blood. There. Now, don't expect me to be glad to see you."**

The whole room echoed with laughter. "So typical!" Piper giggled

"This isn't even the funniest arrival! Nico's was killer!" Thalia exclaimed, Nico ducked down to hide his face but we all knew that it was bright red. That made me begin to wonder, what had happened when Nico came to camp?

**"Uh, thanks." I scooted a little farther away from him because, if there was one thing I had learned from living with Gabe, it was how to tell when an adult has been hitting the happy juice. If Mr. D was a stranger to alcohol, I was a satyr.**

Grover rolled his eyes. Jace snuck her hand the hem of Percy's pant leg and pulled it up while I yanked off his shoes. In the mix, Percy was screaming, "Hey! Let me go! What in Hades are you trying to do!" No goat legs, no hooves.

"Aw!" Nico pouted. "I was kinda hoping that you would find something!" Thalia yanked one of Percy's shoes from my hand and hit Nico really hard upside the head with it. "Ow..." He moaned, rubbing the spot where he had been wacked. Hazel rushed to his side, looking extremely concerned.

"Hazel, we are just messing with him!" Jacinda giggled beside me.

"Why would you do such a thing? You could seriously hurt him!" Hazel gasped. Jace rolled her eyes and Leo got the message, continuing to read.

**"Annabeth?" Mr. Brunner called to the blond girl.**

**She came forward and Mr. Brunner introduced us. "This young lady nursed you back to health, Percy. Annabeth, my dear, why don't you go check on Percy's bunk? We'll be putting him in cabin eleven for now."**

I groaned desperately. "I miss that place so much!"

Connor grinned at me. "You would never recognize it if you saw it now! It's way cooler!"

"What did you do?!" I gasped. Yeah the cabin was old but I loved it so much!

"They did nothing to it!" Jace said, making me very confused. "Now, the gods just claim their children, meaning that you can actually see the floor!"

"OOOHHH!" I nodded in realization.

**Annabeth said, "Sure, Chiron."**

**She was probably my age, maybe a couple of inches taller, and a whole lot more athletic looking. With her deep tan and her curly blond hair, she was almost exactly what I thought a stereotypical California girl would look like, except her eyes ruined the image.**

"Hey!" Annabeth defended

**They were startling gray, like storm clouds; pretty,** **but intimidating, too, as if she were analyzing the best way to take me down in a fight.**

"That's better!" She relaxed.

**She glanced at the minotaur horn in my hands, then back at me. I imagined she was going to say, You killed a minotaur! or Wow, you're so awesome! or something like that.**

"In your dreams!" Everybody from Camp Half-blood chorused. Annabeth smiled, remembering her real response.

**Instead she said, "You drool when you sleep."**

Now, everyone laughed so hard that they couldn't breathe.

**Then she sprinted off down the lawn, her blond hair flying behind her.**

**"So," I said, anxious to change the subject. "You, uh, work here, Mr. Brunner?"**

**"Not Mr. Brunner," the ex-Mr. Brunner said. "I'm afraid that was a pseudonym. You may call me Chiron."**

**"Okay." Totally confused, I looked at the director. "And Mr. D ... does that stand for something?"**

"Sure does, Mr. Dickface!"Jacinda shouted.

Jaws dropped around the room. "Jacey!" Jason scolded before bursting out laughing with everyone else except for Reyna who looked denigrated.

"How dare you call your director something so… so vile! Being an immortal, he has full power to have you incinerated!" She gasped. Jace didn't answer.

**Mr. D stopped shuffling the cards. He looked at me like I'd just belched loudly. "Young man, names are powerful things. You don't just go around using them for no reason."**

"That is why we call you Dickface!" Thalia chimed in.

**"Oh. Right. Sorry."**

**"I must say, Percy," Chiron-Brunner broke in, "I'm glad to see you alive. It's been a long time since I've made a house call to a potential camper. I'd hate to think I've wasted my time."**

**"House call?"**

**"My year at Yancy Academy, to instruct you. We have satyrs at most schools, of course, keeping a lookout. But Grover alerted me as soon as he met you. He sensed you were something special, so I decided to come upstate. I convinced the other Latin teacher to ... ah, take a leave of absence."**

**I tried to remember the beginning of the school year. It seemed like so long ago, but I did have a fuzzy memory of there being another Latin teacher my first week at Yancy. Then, without explanation, he had disappeared and Mr. Brunner had taken the class.**

"I wonder what he did…" Percy pondered.

**"You came to Yancy just to teach me?" I asked.**

**Chiron nodded. "Honestly, I wasn't sure about you at first.**

**We contacted your mother, let her know we were keeping an eye on you in case you were ready for Camp Half-Blood. But you still had so much to learn. Nevertheless, you made it here alive, and that's always the first test."**

**"Grover," Mr. D said impatiently, "are you playing or not?"**

**"Yes, sir!" Grover trembled as he took the fourth chair, though I didn't know why he should be so afraid of a pudgy little man in a tiger-print Hawaiian shirt.**

**"You do know how to play pinochle?" Mr. D eyed me suspiciously.**

**"I'm afraid not," I said.**

**"I'm afraid not, sir," he said.**

"Faggot!" Jace yelled.

**"Sir," I repeated. I was liking the camp director less and less.**

"I am too!" Frank agreed, Hazel nodding.

**"Well," he told me, "it is, along with gladiator fighting and Pac-Man, one of the greatest games ever invented by humans. I would expect all civilized young men to know the rules."**

**"I'm sure the boy can learn," Chiron said.**

**"Please," I said, "what is this place? What am I doing here? Mr. Brunner/Chiron, why would you go to Yancy Academy just to teach me?"**

**Mr. D snorted. "I asked the same question." **

**The camp director dealt the cards. Grover flinched every time one landed in his pile.**

**Chiron smiled at me sympathetically, the way he used to in Latin class, as if to let me know that no matter what my average was, I was his star student. He expected me to have the right answer.**

**"Percy," he said. "Did your mother tell you nothing?'**

**"She said ..." I remembered her sad eyes, looking out over the sea. "She told me she was afraid to send me here, even though my father had wanted her to. She said that once I was here, I probably couldn't leave. She wanted to keep me close to her."**

**"Typical," Mr. D said. "That's how they usually get killed. Young man, are you bidding or not?"**

**"What?" I asked.**

**He explained, impatiently, how you bid in pinochle, and so I did.**

**"I'm afraid there's too much to tell," Chiron said. "I'm afraid our usual orientation film won't be sufficient."**

"Does that mean that you never saw it?" Nico asked.

"Yeah…" Percy said slowly.

"Dude! You haven't lived!" Nico gasped.

**"Orientation film?" I asked.**

**"No," Chiron decided. "Well, Percy. You know your friend Grover is a satyr. You know-" he pointed to the horn in the shoe box- "that you have killed the Minotaur. No small feat, either, lad. What you may not know is that great powers are at work in your life. Gods- the forces you call the Greek gods- are very much alive."**

**I stared at the others around the table.**

**I waited for somebody to yell, Not!**

"We all know the feeling!" Annabeth said.

**But all I got was Mr. D yelling, "Oh, a royal marriage. Trick! Trick!" He cackled as he tallied up his points.**

**"Mr. D," Grover asked timidly, "if you're not going to eat it, could I have your Diet Coke can?"**

A few girls giggled.

**"Eh? Oh, all right."**

**Grover bit a huge shard out of the empty aluminum can and chewed it mournfully.**

**"Wait," I told Chiron. "You're telling me there's such a thing as god."**

**"Well, now," Chiron said. "God- capital G, God. That's a different matter altogether. We shan't deal with the metaphysical."**

**"Metaphysical? But you were just talking about-"**

**"Ah, gods, plural, as in, great beings that control the forces of nature and human endeavors: the immortal gods of Olympus. That's a smaller matter."**

"Smaller?" The romans asked.

**"Smaller?"**

Leo read this with a cheeky smile on his face.

**"Yes, quite. The gods we discussed in Latin class."**

**"Zeus," I said. "Hera. Apollo. You mean them."**

"Because that is the smart thing to do!" Jason teased.

"Who said Percy was smart?" Thalia laughed

**And there it was again, distant thunder on a cloud less day.**

**"Young man," said Mr. D, "I would really be less casual about throwing those names around, if I were you."**

**"But they're stories," I said. "They're- myths, to explain lightning and the seasons and stuff. They're what people believed before there was science."**

**"Science!" Mr. D scoffed. "And tell me, Perseus Jackson"-I flinched when he said my real name, which I never told anybody- "what will people think of your 'science' two thousand years from now?" Mr. D continued. "Hmm? They will call it primitive mumbo jumbo. That's what. Oh, I love mortals- they have absolutely no sense of perspective. They think they've come so-o-o far. And have they, Chiron? Look at this boy and tell me."**

**I wasn't liking Mr. D much, but there was something about the way he called me mortal, as if... he wasn't. It was enough to put a lump in my throat, to suggest why Grover was dutifully minding his cards, chewing his soda can, and keeping his mouth shut.**

**"Percy," Chiron said, "you may choose to believe or not, but the fact is that immortal means immortal. Can you imagine that for a moment, never dying? Never fading? Existing, just as you are, for all time?"**

**I was about to answer, off the top of my head, that it sounded like a pretty good deal, but the tone of Chiron's voice made me hesitate.**

**"You mean, whether people believed in you or not," I said.**

**"Exactly," Chiron agreed. "If you were a god, how would you like being called a myth, an old story to explain lightning? What if I told you, Perseus Jackson, that someday people would call you a myth, just created to explain how little boys can get over losing their mothers?"**

"That would suck!" All us guys agreed

**My heart pounded. He was trying to make me angry for some reason, but I wasn't going to let him. I said, "I wouldn't like it. But I don't believe in gods."**

**"Oh, you'd better," Mr. D murmured. "Before one of them incinerates you."**

**Grover said, "P-please, sir. He's just lost his mother. He's in shock."**

**"A lucky thing, too," Mr. D grumbled, playing a card. "Bad enough I'm confined to this miserable job, working with boys who don't even believe.'"**

**He waved his hand and a goblet appeared on the table, as if the sunlight had bent, momentarily, and woven the air into glass. The goblet filled itself with red wine.**

**My jaw dropped, but Chiron hardly looked up.**

**"Mr. D," he warned, "your restrictions."**

**Mr. D looked at the wine and feigned surprise.**

**"Dear me." He looked at the sky and yelled, "Old habits! Sorry!"**

**More thunder.**

**Mr. D waved his hand again, and the wineglass changed into a fresh can of Diet Coke. He sighed unhappily, popped the top of the soda, and went back to his card game.**

**Chiron winked at me. "Mr. D offended his father a while back, took a fancy to a wood nymph who had been declared off-limits."**

"I'm so glad I'm not him! If Juniper was off limits…" Grover sighed gratefully.

**"A wood nymph," I repeated, still staring at the Diet Coke can like it was from outer space.**

**"Yes," Mr. D confessed. "Father loves to punish me. The first time, Prohibition. Ghastly! Absolutely horrid ten years! The second time- well, she really was pretty, and I couldn't stay away- the second time, he sent me here. Half-Blood Hill. Summer camp for brats like you. 'Be a better influence,' he told me. 'Work with youths rather than tearing them down.' Ha.' Absolutely unfair."**

**Mr. D sounded about six years old, like a pouting little kid.**

**"And ..." I stammered, "your father is ..."**

**"Di immortales, Chiron," Mr. D said. "I thought you taught this boy the basics. My father is Zeus, of course."**

**I ran through D names from Greek mythology. Wine. The skin of a tiger. The satyrs that all seemed to work here. The way Grover cringed, as if Mr. D were his master.**

**"You're Dionysus," I said. "The god of wine."**

"Finally!" Annie sighed.

**Mr. D rolled his eyes. "What do they say, these days, Grover? Do the children say, 'Well, duh!'?"**

"That was… never really something that we said…" Jace argued.

"Then get with the program." Annie flaunted.

**"Y-yes, Mr. D."**

**"Then, well, duh! Percy Jackson. Did you think I was Aphrodite, perhaps?"**

"No!" Piper yelped.

**"You're a god."**

**"Yes, child."**

**"A god. You."**

Everyone laughed at Percy's question.

**He turned to look at me straight on, and I saw a kind of purplish fire in his eyes, a hint that this whiny, plump little man was only showing me the tiniest bit of his true nature. I saw visions of grape vines choking unbelievers to death, drunken warriors insane with battle lust, sailors screaming as their hands turned to flippers, their faces elongating into dolphin snouts. I knew that if I pushed him, Mr. D would show me worse things. He would plant a disease in my brain that would leave me wearing a strait-jacket in a rubber room for the rest of my life.**

**"Would you like to test me, child?" he said quietly.**

**"No. No, sir."**

**The fire died a little. He turned back to his card game. "I believe I win."**

"Wrong! He never wins, like, ever." Annie said ignorantly.

**"Not quite, Mr. D," Chiron said. He set down a straight, tallied the points, and said, "The game goes to me."**

Annie smiled smugly, clearly proud that she was correct.

**I thought Mr. D was going to vaporize Chiron right out of his wheelchair, but he just sighed through his nose, as if he were used to being beaten by the Latin teacher. He got up, and Grover rose, too.**

**"I'm tired," Mr. D said. "I believe I'll take a nap before the sing-along tonight. But first, Grover, we need to talk, again, about your less-than-perfect performance on this assignment."**

Grover shook his head, as if trying to forget a bad memory.

**Grover's face beaded with sweat. "Y-yes, sir."**

**Mr. D turned to me. "Cabin eleven, Percy Jackson. And mind your manners."**

**He swept into the farmhouse, Grover following miserably.**

**"Will Grover be okay?" I asked Chiron.**

**Chiron nodded, though he looked a bit troubled. "Old Dionysus isn't really mad. He just hates his job. He's been ... ah, grounded, I guess you would say, and he can't stand waiting another century before he's allowed to go back to Olympus."**

**"Mount Olympus," I said. "You're telling me there really is a palace there?"**

**"Well now, there's Mount Olympus in Greece. And then there's the home of the gods, the convergence point of their powers, which did indeed used to be on Mount Olympus. It's still called Mount Olympus, out of respect to the old ways, but the palace moves, Percy, just as the gods do."**

**"You mean the Greek gods are here? Like ... in America?"**

"No. They're in Qatar!" Jace said nonchalantly, making it seem like she was serious. **(A/n: Qatar is one of my most popular countries! I love you guys!) **

Apparently, Annie didn't realize she was joking and rolled her eyes.

**"Well, certainly. The gods move with the heart of the West."**

**"The what?"**

**"Come now, Percy. What you call 'Western civilization.' Do you think it's just an abstract concept? No, it's a living force. A collective consciousness that has burned bright for thousands of years. The gods are part of it. You might even say they are the source of it, or at least, they are tied so tightly to it that they couldn't possibly fade, not unless all of Western civilization were obliterated. The fire started in Greece. Then, as you well know- or as I hope you know, since you passed my course- the heart of the fire moved to Rome, and so did the gods. Oh, different names, perhaps- Jupiter for Zeus, Venus for Aphrodite, and so on- but the same forces, the same gods."**

All of the Romans grinned and looked at one another proudly.

**"And then they died."**

Jacinda giggled. "So positive!"

"Will you just _shut up_!" Annie said

**"Died? No. Did the West die? The gods simply moved, to Germany, to France, to Spain, for a while. Wherever the flame was brightest, the gods were there. They spent several centuries in England. All you need to do is look at the architecture.**

**People do not forget the gods. Every place they've ruled, for the last three thousand years, you can see them in paintings, in statues, on the most important buildings. And yes, Percy, of course they are now in your United States. Look at your symbol, the eagle of Zeus. Look at the statue of Prometheus in Rockefeller Center, the Greek facades of your government buildings in Washington. I defy you to find any American city where the Olympians are not prominently displayed in multiple places. Like it or not- and believe me, plenty of people weren't very fond of Rome, either- America is now the heart of the flame. It is the great power of the West. And so Olympus is here. And we are here."**

**It was all too much, especially the fact that I seemed to be included in Chiron's we, as if I were part of some club.**

"Oh yeah! The club of awesome!" The Stolls shouted

**"Who are you, Chiron? Who ... who am I?"**

**Chiron smiled. He shifted his weight as if he was going to get up out of his wheelchair, but I knew that was impossible. He was paralyzed from the waist down.**

**"Who are you?" he mused. "Well, that's the question we all want answered, isn't it? But for now, we should get you a bunk in cabin eleven. There will be new friends to 'meet. And plenty of time for lessons tomorrow. Besides, there will be smores at the campfire tonight, and I simply adore chocolate."**

**And then he did rise from his wheelchair. But there was something odd about the way he did it. His blanket fell away from his legs, but the legs didn't move. His waist kept getting longer, rising above his belt. At first, I thought he was wearing very long, white velvet underwear, but as he kept rising out of the chair, taller than any man, I realized that the velvet underwear wasn't underwear; it was the front of an animal, muscle and skin under coarse white fur. And the wheelchair wasn't a chair. It was some kind of container, an enormous box on wheels, and it must've been magic, because there's no way it could've held all of him. A leg came out, long and knobby-kneed, with a huge polished hoof. Then another front leg, then hindquarters, and then the box was empty, nothing but a metal shell with a couple of fake human legs attached.**

**I stared at the horse who had just sprung from the wheelchair: a huge white stallion. But where its neck should be was the upper body of my Latin teacher, smoothly grafted to the horse's trunk.**

**"What a relief," the centaur said. "I'd been cooped up in there so long, my fetlocks had fallen asleep. Now, come, Percy Jackson. Let's meet the other campers."**

"That was… interesting." I stated.

"It's getting quite late. We should turn in for the night." Reyna said. Finally, a good night's rest. That was all that I needed right then.

You could feel the mood in the room shift from uptight and nervous to relaxed. We all rose and began to exit when Annabeth announced that she wanted to speak with Annie. I, being a son of Hermes, was curious so I snuck around the corner to listen.


	7. Chapter 7

**Enjoy this new chapter!**

"You need to be a little easier on Jacinda." I heard Annabeth say. For as long as I could remember, Annabeth and Jace hated each other.

"Why should I? She took _our_ Luke." Annie defended. So that's why Annabeth hated her, because she was closer to me that Annabeth was!

"Look," I peered around the corner to see Annabeth grab Annie's shoulders. "She's been through a lot since… your time. She's had a rough life."

Annie looked up and blinked. "What… What happened to her?"

"I'm sure it will come up in the book."

"Does it have to do with… Luke?"

Annabeth hesitated. Taking a deep breath, she nodded. "Yes, it does. Most of it. But there is more, a lot more. Things you wouldn't understand."

"I'd understand! I'm Athena's daughter!"

"I don't know how to put it. If you really want to know, stay while we read."

"But… I want to know now!"

"Then ask her."

The pair turned to exit. Realizing this, I turned around and jogged to catch up with the others.

"Where have you been?" Jacey asked, giggling. I smiled, not knowing what to say. On the inside, I felt like I needed to apologize for what I'd done before my death. I needed to say I was sorry for ruining her whole life and breaking her heart. The problem was that I just couldn't get the words out of my mouth. My palms grew sweaty just thinking about it.

Reyna led us down the twisting stone path. Nobody spoke much, just the occasional spasm from Jace or bleat from Grover. Suddenly, Reyna stops between two cabin-like buildings. "This is where you will sleep. Girls on the left, boys on the right."

Saying goodnight, we separated into the cabins. Percy and Jason went back to the camp with Hazel and Frank. I followed the other guys into the building.

The inside reminded me of the cabins back at Camp Half-blood. The off-white walls were lined with bunks. A desk was nestled in the corner of the room. Another door was on the side of the room, I guessed it was a bathroom.

Leo and the Stolls grinned, claiming their beds. Nico shot a sideways glace at me before racing to the last top bunk, beating me. We got ready for bed and flicked the lights off.

As I lay in bed, I couldn't get Jacinda off of my mind. I couldn't just go on and act like nothing happened. It would be impossible for me to rest without talking to her.

Once I was sure that the other boys were asleep, I rose out of bed and slipped out of the cabin. Tiptoeing across the pathway, I peered into the window of the girls' bedroom. The lights were dim, but they were up. I could hear soft music playing and I saw the ladies all either in bed or wandering about the cabin preparing for rest; removing makeup, brushing their hair, or talking to the others. Jace lay on her stomach, feet kicked up in the air, facing the foot of her top bunk, with her iPod in her hands.

I rapped my knuckles across the wooden door. I watched as it swung back. Thalia stood in the doorway, looking me up and down.

"What?" She asked rudely.

"Can I speak with Jace please?" I asked, looking past the punk-rocker.

Jacinda looked up and smiled. She rolled to where her legs were slung over the edge of the bed and jumped. Grabbing her hand, I led her to the back of the cabin.

I looked down at our hands, fingers interlaced. She still wore the promise ring that I had given her on the Princess Andromeda. I promised to love and hold her forever and be there when she needed me most. Clearly, it had turned into a lying ring. I hadn't kept true to my words.

"I never took it off. There was always hope." She said, noticing that I was staring at her hand.

I still couldn't figure out what to say. I said the best thing I could deem, "I still love you."

Silence; long, brutal, complete silence. I couldn't even tell what she was thinking.

Finally, her face fell from a grin. She looked grim and sad. "I don't know if I can do this again." Her voice was quiet, sounding like if she said more; she would break down to tears. I reached my hand forward and caressed her face. She dropped her head to look at the ground.

I took a deep breath and swallowed my pride. "I'm sorry. I-I don't know how I can make it up to you." I stuttered, my eyes growing misty.

Jace looked into my eyes, tears in hers. I shifted my weight uneasily. She dropped my hand and covered her face. Hopeful, I embraced her in a hug. I tried not to show it but a tear slid down my cheek. We cried together.

After a few minutes, I loosened my grip and turned, planting a kiss on Jacinda's lips. She kissed me back, still weeping quietly. I traced her spine with my fingertips. Never before had I seen her so… small. I had known her since we were both so young, but with me, she seemed to have two different sides. On the first, she was the fun-loving, spontaneous girl that everyone knew and loved. On the flipside, she was sweet and sensitive, though she never seemed quite this distant. It killed me to see her is such a vulnerable state.

"I… still love you." Jace said in a hushed tone,, barely above a whisper. A rush of relief washed through me, showering me with the happiness.

We walked back to the cabins and kissed goodnight, going our separate ways.

The next morning, I woke to the wonderful screaming of Thalia outside the door, "Luke, get your lazy butt out of bed or I'll get it out for you!" Ah, home sweet-OUCH! I must have taken too long to get out of bed in Thalia's opinion because suddenly, my butt was zapped with a gazillion volts of electricity. Yelping, I sprung out of my bed,

Quickly, I shuffled around tue cabin, getting dressed. In the matter of a minute, I was sitting in the room where we had been reading. Shortly after, the others began to pour in.


	8. Lord of the Bathroom

**Enjoy this new chapter!**

Annabeth picked up the book to begin reading for the day.

"Chapter six," she began, "**I Become Supreme Lord of the Bathroom**."

**Once I got over the fact that my Latin teacher was a horse, we had a nice tour, though I was careful not to walk behind him. I'd done pooper-scooper patrol in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade a few times, and, I'm sorry, I did not trust Chiron's back end the way I trusted his front.**

Laughing, already. I've got to give Percy some credit, he's a funny guy.

Annie rolled her eyes. Jace grinned up at me from where her head was on my chest. Gently, I kissed her forehead and smiled.

**We passed the volleyball pit. Several of the campers nudged each other. One pointed to the Minotaur horn I was carrying. Another said, "That's him."**

**Most of the campers were older than me. Their satyr friends were bigger than Grover, all of them trotting around in orange CAMP HALF-BLOOD T-shirts, with nothing else to cover their bare shaggy hindquarters. I wasn't normally shy, but the way they stared at me made me uncomfortable. I felt like they were expecting me to do a flip or something.**

**I looked back at the farmhouse. It was a lot bigger than I'd realized—four stories tall, sky blue with white trim, like an upscale seaside resort. I was checking out the brass eagle weather vane** **on top when something caught my eye, a shadow in the uppermost window of the attic gable. Something had moved the curtain, just for a second, and I got the distinct impression I was being watched.**

"Creepy..." Leo whispered when Percy shivered.

**"What's up there?" I asked Chiron.**

**He looked where I was pointing, and his smile faded. "Just the attic."**

**"Somebody lives there?"**

**"No," he said with finality. "Not a single living thing."**

"But there is a dead thing living there," Annabeth smiled. Everyone who hadn't seen the oracle looked confused.

**I got the feeling he was being truthful. But I was also sure something had moved that curtain.**

**"Come along, Percy," Chiron said, his lighthearted tone now a little forced. "Lots to see."**

**We walked through the strawberry fields, where campers were picking bushels of berries while a satyr played a tune on a reed pipe.**

**Chiron told me the camp grew a nice crop for export to New York restaurants and Mount Olympus. "It pays our expenses," he explained. "And the strawberries take almost no effort."**

**He said Mr. D had this effect on fruit-bearing plants: they just went crazy when he was around. It worked best with wine grapes, but Mr. D was restricted from growing those, so they grew strawberries instead.**

**I watched the satyr playing his pipe. His music was causing lines of bugs to leave the strawberry patch in every direction, like refugees fleeing a fire. I wondered if Grover could work that kind of magic with music.**

Several demigods groaned, shaking their heads.

"Hey!" Grover exclaimed.

**I wondered if he was still inside the farmhouse, getting chewed out by Mr. D.**

**"Grover won't get in too much trouble, will he?" I asked Chiron. "I mean ... he was a good protector. Really."**

**Chiron sighed. He shed his tweed jacket and draped it over his horses back like a saddle. "Grover has big dreams, Percy. Perhaps bigger than are reasonable.** **To reach his goal, he must first demonstrate great courage by succeeding as a keeper, finding a new camper and bringing him safely to Half-Blood Hill."**

**"But he did that!"**

**"I might agree with you," Chiron said. "But it is not my place to judge. Dionysus and the Council of Cloven Elders must decide. I'm afraid they might not see this assignment as a success. After all, Grover lost you in New York. Then there's the unfortunate ... ah ... fate of your mother. And the fact that Grover was unconscious when you dragged him over the property line. The council might question whether this shows any courage on Grover's part."**

**I wanted to protest. None of what happened was Grover's fault. I also felt really, really guilty. If I hadn't given Grover the slip at the bus station, he might not have gotten in trouble.**

**"He'll get a second chance, won't he?"**

Thalia sighed.

**Chiron winced. "I'm afraid that **_**was **_**Grover's second chance, Percy. The council was not anxious to give him another, either, after what happened the first time, five years ago. ****Olympus knows, I advised him to wait longer before trying again. He's still so small for his age..."**

**"How old is he?"**

**"Oh, twenty-eight."**

Several people gasped. "How..." Jason said, at a loss for words.

**"What! And he's in sixth grade?"**

**"Satyrs mature half as fast as humans, Percy. Grover has been the equivalent of a middle school student for the past six years."**

**"That's horrible."**

**"Quite," Chiron agreed. "At any rate, Grover is a late bloomer, even by satyr standards, and not yet very accomplished at woodland magic. Alas, he was anxious to pursue his dream. Perhaps now he will find some other career..."**

**"That's not fair," I said. "What happened the first time? Was it really so bad?"**

"Yes," I snickered.

**Chiron looked away quickly. "Let's move along, shall we?"**

**But I wasn't quite ready to let the subject drop. Something had occurred to me when Chiron talked about my mother's fate, as if he were intentionally avoiding the word **_**death. **_**The beginnings of an idea—a tiny, hopeful fire—started forming in my mind.**

**"Chiron," I said. "If the gods and Olympus and all that are real ..."**

**"Yes, child?"**

**"Does that mean the Underworld is real, too?"**

"Oh gods, Percy," Frank muttered.

"You better not..." Annie gasped.

Percy grinned mischievously

**Chiron's expression darkened.**

**"Yes, child." He paused, as if choosing his words carefully. "There is a place where spirits go after death. But for now ... until we know more ... I would urge you to put that out of your mind."**

**"What do you mean, 'until we know more'?"**

**"Come, Percy. Let's see the woods."**

"Not the woods!" Annie exclaimed.

**As we got closer, I realized how huge the forest was. It took up at least a quarter of the valley, with trees so tall and thick, you could imagine nobody had been in there since the Native Americans.**

**Chiron said, "The woods are stocked, if you care to try your luck, but go armed."**

**"Stocked with what?" I asked. "Armed with what?"**

**"You'll see. Capture the flag is Friday night. Do you have your own sword and shield?"**

**"My own—?"**

**"No," Chiron said. "I don't suppose you do. I think a size five will do. I'll visit the armory later."**

**I wanted to ask what kind of summer camp had an armory, but there was too much else to think about, so the tour continued. We saw the archery range, the canoeing lake, the stables (which Chiron didn't seem to like very much),**

**the javelin range, the sing-along amphitheatre, and the arena where Chiron said they held sword and spear fights.**

**Oh, yes, and there's the mess hall.**

**Chiron pointed to an outdoor pavilion framed in white Grecian columns on a hill overlooking the sea. There were a dozen stone picnic tables. No roof. No walls.**

**"What do you do when it rains?" I asked.**

The Camp Half-blood kids snickered.

**Chiron looked at me as if I'd gone a little weird.**

**"We still have to eat, don't we?" I decided to drop the subject.**

**Finally, he showed me the cabins. There were twelve of them, nestled in the woods by the lake. They were arranged in a U, with two at the base and five in a row on either side. And they were without doubt the most bizarre collection of buildings I'd ever seen.**

**Except for the fact that each had a large brass number above the door (odds on the left side, evens on the right), they looked absolutely nothing alike. Number nine had smokestacks, like a tiny factory.**

"Cabin number nine is awesome!" Leo yelled.

**Number four had tomato vines on the walls and a roof made out of real grass.**

**Seven seemed to be made of solid gold, which gleamed so much in the sunlight it was almost impossible to look at.**

"Yay! Apollo!" Jace giggled.

**They all faced a commons area about the size of a soccer field, dotted with Greek statues, fountains, flower beds, and a couple of basketball hoops (which were more my speed).**

**In the center of the field was a huge stone-lined firepit. Even though it was a warm afternoon, the hearth smoldered. A girl about nine years old was tending the flames, poking the coals with a stick.**

"Hestia!" Percy smiled.

**The pair of cabins at the head of the field, numbers one and two, looked like his-and-hers mausoleums, big white marble boxes with heavy columns in front. Cabin one was the biggest and bulkiest of the twelve. Its polished bronze doors shimmered like a hologram, so that from different angles lightning bolts seemed to streak across them.**

Jason grinned while Thalia winced, "I don't really like that cabin." She said.

**Cabin two was more graceful somehow, with slimmer columns garlanded with pomegranates and flowers. The walls were carved with images of peacocks.**

Piper shivered.

**"Zeus and Hera?" I guessed.**

**"Correct," Chiron said.**

**"Their cabins look empty."**

**"Several of the cabins are. That's true. No one ever stays in one or two."**

**Okay. So each cabin had a different god, like a mascot.**

"That's... one way to look at it." Travis nodded.

**Twelve cabins for the twelve Olympians. But why would some be empty?**

**I stopped in front of the first cabin on the left, cabin three.**

**It wasn't high and mighty like cabin one, but long and low and solid. The outer walls were of rough gray stone studded with pieces of seashell and coral, as if the slabs had been hewn straight from the bottom of the ocean floor. I peeked inside the open doorway**

"Oh, I wouldn't do that." Annie snorted.

Annabeth and Percy grinned.

**and Chiron said, "Oh, I wouldn't do that!"**

The room filled with laughter. "Now, Annie thinks like a horse too!" Jacinda grinned, meaning in addition to a goat.

**Before he could pull me back, I caught the salty scent of the interior, like the wind on the shore at Montauk. The interior walls glowed like abalone. There were six empty bunk beds with silk sheets turned down. **

"I miss that place," Percy sighed.

Annabeth rubbed her palm along his arm. I squirmed a little, feeling slightly awkward. When Jace looked up at me, I sat still and smiled, hiding my discomfort. She didn't seem to fall for it, raising an eyebrow and turning away.

But** there was no sign anyone had ever slept there. The place felt so sad and lonely, I was glad when Chiron put his hand on my shoulder and said, "Come along, Percy."**

**Most of the other cabins were crowded with campers.**

**Number five was bright red—a real nasty paint job, as if the color had been splashed on with buckets and fists.**

**The roof was lined with barbed wire. A stuffed wild boar's head hung over the doorway, and its eyes seemed to follow me. Inside I could see a bunch of mean-looking kids, both girls and boys, arm wrestling and arguing with each other while rock music blared. The loudest was a girl maybe thirteen or fourteen. She wore a size XXXL CAMP HALF-BLOOD T-shirt under a camouflage jacket. She zeroed in on me and gave me an evil sneer. She reminded me of Nancy Bobofit, though the camper girl was much bigger and tougher looking, and her hair was long and stringy, and brown instead of red.**

**I kept walking, trying to stay clear of Chiron's hooves. "We haven't seen any other centaurs," I observed.**

**"No," said Chiron sadly. "My kinsmen are a wild and barbaric folk, **

"WHOOP! Party Ponies rule!" Connor screamed. I started to laugh, remembering when the Party Ponies manically attacked us on the Princess Andromeda. Apparently, Jacey remembered too, also laughing.

**I'm afraid. You might encounter them in the wilderness, or at major sporting events. But you won't see any here."**

"Those are... two very different things." Frank nodded. I continued to laugh.

**"You said your name was Chiron. Are you really ..."**

**He smiled down at me. **_**"The **_**Chiron from the stories? Trainer of Hercules and all that? Yes, Percy, I am."**

**"But, shouldn't you be dead?"**

"A lot of things _should_ be dead, but most never will be." Nico said.

**Chiron paused, as if the question intrigued him. "I honestly don't know about **_**should **_**be. The truth is, I **_**can't **_**be dead. You see, eons ago the gods granted my wish. I could continue the work I loved. I could be a teacher of heroes as long as humanity needed me. I gained much from that wish ... and I gave up much. But I'm still here, so I can only assume I'm still needed."**

**I thought about being a teacher for three thousand years. It wouldn't have made my Top Ten Things to Wish For list.**

We all laughed again.

**"Doesn't it ever get boring?"**

**"No, no," he said. "Horribly depressing, at times, but never boring."**

**"Why depressing?"**

**Chiron seemed to turn hard of hearing again.**

**"Oh, look," he said. "Annabeth is waiting for us."**

**The blonde girl I'd met at the Big House was reading a book in front of the last cabin on the left, number eleven.**

**When we reached her, she looked me over critically, like she was still thinking about how much I drooled.**

**I tried to see what she was reading, but I couldn't make out the title. I thought my dyslexia was acting up. Then I realized the title wasn't even English. The letters looked Greek to me. I mean, literally Greek.**

Percy held up his hand, blushing, before anyone could comment.

**There were pictures of temples and statues and different kinds of columns, like those in an architecture book.**

**"Annabeth," Chiron said, "I have masters' archery class at noon. Would you take Percy from here?"**

"**Yes, sir."**

**"Cabin eleven," Chiron told me, gesturing toward the doorway. "Make yourself at home."**

**Out of all the cabins, eleven looked the most like a regular old summer camp cabin, with the emphasis on **_**old.**_

I straightened up. "Do you have a problem with that?" I asked defensively.

Percy shook his head innocently, "No."

**The threshold was worn down, the brown paint peeling. Over the doorway was one of those doctor's symbols, a winged pole with two snakes wrapped around it. What did they call it... ?**

Jace and I face-palmed in sync.

**A caduceus.**

**Inside, it was packed with people, both boys and girls, way more than the number of bunk beds. Sleeping bags were spread all over on the floor. It looked like a gym where the Red Cross had set up an evacuation center.**

"Dude! Why is it so crowded?" Leo exclaimed.

"You'll see," Percy smiled.

"Wait," I said, "why isn't it crowded now?"

"You'll see," Percy repeated

**Chiron didn't go in. The door was too low for him. But when the campers saw him they all stood and bowed respectfully.**

**"Well, then," Chiron said. "Good luck, Percy. I'll see you at dinner."**

**He galloped away toward the archery range.**

**I stood in the doorway, looking at the kids. They weren't bowing anymore. They were staring at me, sizing me up. I knew this routine. I'd gone through it at enough schools.**

**"Well?" Annabeth prompted. "Go on."**

**So naturally I tripped coming in the door and made a total fool of myself.**

The Stolls, Jace, and I all laugh remembering the event, causing everyone else to snicker.

**There were some snickers from the campers, but none of them said anything.**

**Annabeth announced, "Percy Jackson, meet cabin eleven."**

**"Regular or undetermined?" somebody asked.**

**I didn't know what to say, but Annabeth said, "Undetermined."**

**Everybody groaned.**

**A guy who was a little older than the rest came forward.**

I looked down.

**"Now, now, campers. That's what we're here for. Welcome, Percy. You can have that spot on the floor, right over there."**

**The guy was about nineteen, and he looked pretty cool. He was tall and muscular, with short-cropped sandy hair and a friendly smile. He wore an orange tank top, cutoffs, sandals, and a leather necklace with five different-colored clay beads. The only thing unsettling about his appearance was a thick white scar that ran from just beneath his right eye to his jaw, like an old knife slash.**

I winced as Annabeth read about my scar. Jacinda gently ran her finger along it, just like she did when I returned from my quest and she saw it for the first time.

**"This is Luke," ****Annabeth said, and her voice sounded different somehow. I glanced ****over and could've sworn she was blushing.**

Annabeth blushed.

**She saw me looking, and her expression hardened again. "He's your counselor, for now."**

**"For now?" I asked.**

**"You're undetermined," Luke explained patiently. "They don't know what cabin to put you in, so you're here. Cabin eleven takes all newcomers, all visitors. Naturally, we would. Hermes, our patron, is the god of travelers."**

**I looked at the tiny section of floor they'd given me. I had nothing to put there to mark it as my own, no luggage, no clothes, no sleeping bag. Just the Minotaur's horn. I thought about setting that down, but then I remembered that Hermes was also the god of thieves.**

"Smart move, man." I praised.

**I looked around at the campers' faces, some sullen and suspicious, some grinning stupidly, some eying me as if they were waiting for a chance to pick my pockets.**

**"How long will I be here?" I asked.**

**"Good question," Luke said. "Until you're determined."**

**"How long will that take?"**

**The campers all laughed.**

**"Come on," Annabeth told me. "I'll show you the volleyball court."**

**"I've already seen it."**

Hazel smiled, "You seemed so stupid!"

"Seemed? He still _is _stupid!" Thalia teased.

**"Come on." She grabbed my wrist and dragged me outside. I could hear the kids of cabin eleven laughing behind me.**

**When we were a few feet away, Annabeth said, "Jackson, you have to do better than that."**

**"What?"**

Several people snickered.

**She rolled her eyes and mumbled under her breath, "I can't believe I thought you were the one."**

"Tell us how you really feel!" Travis laughed.

**"What's your problem?" I was getting angry now. "All I know is, I kill some bull guy—"**

**"Don't talk like that!" Annabeth told me. "You know how many kids at this camp wish they'd had your chance?"**

**"To get killed?"**

**"To fight the Minotaur! What do you think we train for?"**

**I shook my head. "Look, if the thing I fought really was **_**the **_**Minotaur, the same one in the stories ..."**

**"Yes."**

**"Then there's only one."**

**"Yes."**

**"And he died, like, a gajillion years ago, right? **

"Gajillion isn't a word," Annie informed us.

**Theseus killed him in the labyrinth. So ..."**

**"Monsters don't die, Percy. They can be killed. But they don't die."**

"Because that's not confusing!" Jacinda giggled

**"Oh, thanks. That clears it up."**

"Sure it does," Reyna said.

**"They don't have souls, like you and me. You can dispel them for a while, maybe even for a whole lifetime if you're lucky. But they are primal forces. Chiron calls them arche-types. Eventually, they re-form."**

**I thought about Mrs. Dodds. "You mean if I killed one, accidentally, with a sword—"**

**"The Fur ... I mean, your math teacher. That's right. She's still out there. You just made her very, very mad."**

**"How did you know about Mrs. Dodds?"**

**"You talk in your sleep."**

"Percy does some strange things in his sleep," Jason grinned. Percy pursed his lips but didn't speak.

**"You almost called her something. A Fury? They're Hades' torturers, right?"**

**Annabeth glanced nervously at the ground, as if she expected it to open up and swallow her.**

"I know that feeling," Percy muttered, glaring at Nico.

**"You shouldn't call them by name, even here. We call them the Kindly Ones, if we have to speak of them at all."**

**"Look, is there anything we **_**can **_**say without it thundering?" I sounded whiny, even to myself, but right then I didn't care. "Why do I have to stay in cabin eleven, anyway? Why is everybody so crowded together? There are plenty of empty bunks right over there."**

**I pointed to the first few cabins, and Annabeth turned pale. "You don't just choose a cabin, Percy. It depends on who your parents are. Or ... your parent."**

**She stared at me, waiting for me to get it.**

**"My mom is Sally Jackson," I said.** **"She works at the candy store in Grand Central Station. At least, she used to."**

**"I'm sorry about your mom, Percy. But that's not what I mean. I'm talking about your other parent. Your dad."**

**"He's dead. I never knew him."**

**Annabeth sighed. Clearly, she'd had this conversation before with other kids.**

**"Your father's not dead, Percy."**

**"How can you say that? You know him?"**

**"No, of course not."**

**"Then how can you say—"**

**"Because I know **_**you.**_ **You wouldn't be here if you weren't one of us."**

**"You don't know anything about me."**

**"No?" She raised an eyebrow. "I bet you moved around from school to school. I bet you were kicked out of a lot of them."**

**"How—"**

**"Diagnosed with dyslexia. Probably ADHD, too."**

**I tried to swallow my embarrassment. "What does that have to do with anything?"**

**"Taken together, it's almost a sure sign. The letters float off the page when you read, right? That's because your mind is hardwired for ancient Greek.** **And the ADHD—you're impulsive, can't sit still in the classroom. That's your battle field reflexes. In a real fight, they'd keep you alive. As for the attention problems, that's because you see too much, Percy, not too little. Your senses are better than a regular mortal's. Of course the teachers want you medicated. Most of them are monsters. They don't want you seeing them for what they are."**

**"You sound like ... you went through the same thing?"**

**"Most of the kids here did. If you weren't like us, you couldn't have survived the Minotaur, much less the ambrosia and nectar."**

**"Ambrosia and nectar."**

**"The food and drink we were giving you to make you better. That stuff would've killed a normal kid. **

**It would've turned your blood to fire and your bones to sand and you'd be dead. Face it. You're a half-blood."**

**A half-blood.**

"Yay! Being a half-blood is fun!" Jace cheered.

There was a long silence before Percy turned to her. "No, it's not." He said.

"True," Jace nodded.

**I was reeling with so many questions I didn't know where to start.**

**Then a husky voice yelled, "Well! A newbie!"**

**I looked over. The big girl from the ugly red cabin was sauntering toward us. She had three other girls behind her, all big and ugly and mean looking like her, all wearing camo jackets.**

"Oh gods," Jason and Leo gasped.

I clutched my side, remembering the time when Jace saved my life after Clarisse stabbed me.

**"Clarisse," Annabeth sighed. "Why don't you go polish your spear or something?"**

**"Sure, Miss Princess," the big girl said. "So I can run you through with it Friday night."**

_**''Erre es korakas!"**_ **Annabeth said, which I somehow under stood was Greek for 'Go to the crows!' though I had a feeling it was a worse curse than it sounded.**

"You bet it is!" Thalia grinned.

**"You don't stand a chance."**

**"We'll pulverize you," Clarisse said, but her eye twitched. Perhaps she wasn't sure she could follow through on the threat. **

**She turned toward me. "Who's this little runt?"**

**"Percy Jackson," Annabeth said, "meet Clarisse, Daughter of Ares."**

**I blinked. "Like ... the war god?"**

**Clarisse sneered. "You got a problem with that?"**

**"No," I said, recovering my wits. "It explains the bad smell."**

Face-palm. Percy sucks at insults.**  
**

**Clarisse growled. "We got an initiation ceremony for newbies, Prissy."**

**"Percy."**

**"Whatever. Come on, I'll show you."**

**"Clarisse—" Annabeth tried to say.**

**"Stay out of it, wise girl."**

**Annabeth looked pained, but she did stay out of it, and I didn't really want her help. I was the new kid. I had to earn my own rep.**

**I handed Annabeth my minotaur horn and got ready to fight, but before I knew it, Clarisse had me by the neck and was dragging me toward a cinder-block building that I knew immediately was the bathroom.**

"Oh no!" Hazel gasped.

**I was kicking and punching. I'd been in plenty of fights before, but this big girl Clarisse had hands like iron. **

**She dragged me into the girls' bathroom. There was a line of toilets on one side and a line of shower stalls down the other. It smelled just like any public bathroom, and I was thinking—as much as I **_**could **_**think with Clarisse ripping my hair out—that if this place belonged to the gods, they should've been able to afford classier johns.**

Everyone laughed extremely hard. "Why do you always think about the little things?" Annabeth asked.

"Because it takes my mind off of the bad stuff that is about to happen," Percy explained.

**Clarisse's friends were all laughing, and I was trying to find the strength I'd used to fight the Minotaur, but it just wasn't there.**

**"Like he's 'Big Three' material," Clarisse said as she pushed me toward one of the toilets. "Yeah, right. Minotaur probably fell over laughing, he was so stupid looking."**

**Her friends snickered.**

**Annabeth stood in the corner, watching through her fingers.**

"I was not!" said Annabeth

"Annabeth, yes you were," Percy said, defeating Annabeth.

**Clarisse bent me over on my knees and started pushing my head toward the toilet bowl. It reeked like rusted pipes and, well, like what goes into toilets. **

**I strained to keep my head up. I was looking at the scummy water, thinking, I will not go into that. I won't.**

**Then something happened. I felt a tug in the pit of my stomach.**

I smiled. Clarisse was going to get it!

**I heard the plumbing rumble, the pipes shudder. Clarisse's grip on my hair loosened. Water shot out of the toilet, making an arc straight over my head, and the next thing I knew, I was sprawled on the bathroom tiles with Clarisse screaming behind me.**

"Yes!" Jason leaped to his feet, cheering.

**I turned just as water blasted out of the toilet again, hitting Clarisse straight in the face so hard it pushed her down onto her butt. The water stayed on her like the spray from a fire hose, pushing her backward into a shower stall.**

**She struggled, gasping, and her friends started coming toward her.**

**But then the other toilets exploded, too, and six more streams of toilet water blasted them back. The showers acted up, too, and together all the fixtures sprayed the camouflage girls right out of the bathroom, spinning them around like pieces of garbage being washed away.**

**As soon as they were out the door, I felt the tug in my gut lessen, and the water shut off as quickly as it had started.**

"YEAH PERCY!" yelled Leo.

"EAT THAT CLARISSE!" I screamed.

Pery dropped his head to hide his blushing face. Reyna and Hazel smile respectfully whilthy the rest of us cheered about Clarisse getting sprayed.

We all settled down eventually and Annabeth picked up where we left off.

**The entire bathroom was flooded. Annabeth hadn't been spared.**

"Thanks for that, Percy," said Annabeth

"Annabeth, you know that I couldn't control it," said Percy

**She was dripping wet, but she hadn't been pushed out the door. She was standing in exactly the same place, staring at me in shock.**

**I looked down and realized I was sitting in the only dry spot in the whole room. There was a circle of dry floor around me. I didn't have one drop of water on my clothes. Nothing.**

"How...?" Jason stumbled over his words.

Percy shrugged like it was an everyday occurrence, attacking the big bully with toilet water, on accident.

**I stood up, my legs shaky.**

**Annabeth said, "How did you ..."**

**"I don't know."**

**We walked to the door. Outside, Clarisse and her friends were sprawled in the mud, and a bunch of other campers had gathered around to gawk. Clarisse's hair was flattened across her face. Her camouflage jacket was sopping and she smelled like sewage. **

**She gave me a look of absolute hatred. "You are dead, new boy. You are totally dead."**

Percy held out his arms, admiring the fact that he was stil alive.

**I probably should have let it go, but I said, "You want to gargle with toilet water again, Clarisse? Close your mouth."**

Laughing, again.

**Her friends had to hold her back. They dragged her toward cabin five, while the other campers made way to avoid her flailing feet.**

**Annabeth stared at me. I couldn't tell whether she was just grossed out or angry at me for dousing her.**

"**What?" I demanded. "What are you thinking?"**

**"I'm thinking," she said, "that I want you on my team for capture the flag."**

"I didn't like that idea," Percy grimaced.

"but we won!" I smiled.

Jacinda rubbed her temple where she had gotten a bad concussion during that game. "I didn't like it either." She winced. I kissed her temple.

Piper grabbed the Book and turned to the next chapter.


	9. My Dinner Goes up in Smoke

**Sorry it's been a while but I've been super busy. Enjoy this though.  
**

**"My Dinner Goes Up in Smoke"** Piper read

**Word of the bathroom incident spread immediately. Wherever I went, campers pointed at me and murmured something about toilet water. Or maybe they were just staring at Annabeth, who was still pretty much dripping wet.**

"And _that_ was very much appriciated," Annabeth said, her voice drowned with sarcasm.

"You're very welcome," Percy said, a little too seriously. He leaned over and kissed Annabeth on the forehead.

**She showed me a few more places: the metal shop (where kids were forging their own swords), the arts-and-crafts room (where satyrs were sandblasting a giant marble statue of a goat-man),**

Grover's eyes seemed to have lit up. "Pan!" He exclaimed.

"The cooking spray?" Leo questioned Grover's words.

Grover took a deep breath. "No! Pan!" He said very arrticulatly, "P-A-N"

Leo cocked his eyebrow and seemed to wonder why Grover cared so much and let the conversation go. I snickered and leaned back, lying down on my back, Jace just grabbed my hand and laid down next to me.

**and the climbing wall, which actually consisted of two facing walls that shook violently, dropped boulders, sprayed lava, and clashed together if you didn't get to the top fast enough.**

"What the-!" Frank gawked

"You sound suprised that this exists..." I said sarcastically.

**Finally we returned to the canoeing lake, where the trail led back to the cabins.**

**"I've got training to do," Annabeth said flatly. "Dinner's at seven-thirty. Just follow your cabin to the mess hall."**

**"Annabeth, I'm sorry about the toilets."**

"Yeah, don't mention that. You are so dead." I smiled at the ceiling.

"Am I?" Percy chuckled.

**"Whatever."**

**"It wasn't my fault."**

"_Sure!"_ Travis laughed.

**She looked at me skeptically, and I realized it **_**was **_**my fault. I'd made water shoot out of the bathroom fixtures. I didn't understand how. But the toilets had responded to me. I had become one with the plumbing.**

Everyone laughed this time.

**"You need to talk to the Oracle," Annabeth said.**

"Why would you ever, _ever_ suggest that?" Percy shivered.

"Why wouldn't you want to go see Rachel? She's really cool.." Jason said.

"Rachel? Who in the world is Rachel?" I said, lifting my head a little. I had clearly missed WAY too much.

**"Who?"**

**"Not who. What.**

Leo, Jason and Piper looked overly confused which, in turn, confused the Romans... and me.

**"The Oracle. I'll ask Chiron."**

**I stared into the lake, wishing somebody would give me a straight answer for once.**

**I wasn't expecting anybody to be looking back at me from the bottom, so my heart skipped a beat when I noticed two teenage girls sitting cross-legged at the base of the pier, about twenty feet below.**

"Creeps." Jacinda grumbled.

"And flirts." Annabeth said in the same disgusted tone.

I waggled my eyebrows, "I sense jealousy."

"I sense... a case of the crazies." Annie said.

**They wore blue jeans and shimmering green T-shirts, and their brown hair floated loose around their shoulders as minnows darted in and out. They smiled and waved as if I were a long-lost friend.**

"Technically you are," said Annabeth

"It's not like I knew that at the time!" Percy defended.

**I didn't know what else to do. I waved back.**

**"Don't encourage them," Annabeth warned. "Naiads are terrible flirts."**

**"Naiads," I repeated, feeling completely overwhelmed. "That's it. I want to go home now."**

"So that is what made up your mind? A bunch of stupid Naiads?" I asked.

Percy blushed.

**Annabeth frowned. "Don't you get it, Percy? You **_**are **_**home. This is the only safe place on earth for kids like us."**

**"You mean, mentally disturbed kids?"**

"Hey!" Jace shouted, lifting her head and glaring at Percy.

"You just called your own girlfriend mentally disturbed." Thalia said matter-of-factly.

**"I mean **_**not human. **_**Not totally human, anyway. Half-human."**

"That sounds so odd..." Piper muttered before continuing to read.

**"Half-human and half-what?"**

"Half-Chimpanzee!" Leo yelled.

Jace laughed. "What would you say if I told you that?" Annabeth asked.

"I probably wouldn't stick around long enough to say much of anything. I would run right out of camp." Percy said dramatically.

**"I think you know."**

**I didn't want to admit it, but I was afraid I did. I felt a tingling in my limbs, a sensation I sometimes felt when my mom talked about my dad.**

**"God," I said. "Half-god."**

"Ding ding ding!" Thalia yelled.

**Annabeth nodded. "Your father isn't dead, Percy. He's one of the Olympians."**

**"That's ... crazy."**

"How does it still seem like a shock? He's been at camp for a whole day and seen everything. All thta everyone talks about is the Greek gods, yet it is suprising?" Jacinda rambled.

Annabeth pursed her lips, "Percy... wasn't the smartest."

"No dip, Sherlock!" I huffed. Everyone laughed.

**"Is it? What's the most common thing gods did in the old stories? They ran around falling in love with humans and having kids with them. Do you think they've changed their habits in the last few millennia?"**

"I still hadn't processed the existance of the gods!" Percy defended.

**"But those are just—" I almost said **_**myths **_**again. Then I remembered Chiron's warning that in two thousand years, **_**I **_**might be considered a myth.**

"No need to wait two thousand years. You're a myth now!" Reyna said.

**"But if all the kids here are half-gods—"**

**"Demigods," Annabeth said. "That's the official term. Or half-bloods."**

**"Then who's your dad?"**

**Her hands tightened around the pier railing. I got the feeling I'd just trespassed on a sensitive subject.**

**"My dad is a professor at West Point," she said. "I haven't seen him since I was very small. He teaches American history."**

"West Point? The military academy?" Jason questioned. Then, for the first time I noticed that He was lightly holding Piper's hand and Piper had her head on his sholder. They looked adorable together

"Yep, he doesn't teach there any more. He lives in San Francisco." Annabeth sighed, "We should visit!"

Jacey tensed at the mention of West Point. She opened her mouth to say something but when I pulled her closed to me, she frowned and closed her eyes.

**"He's human."**

**"What? You assume it has to be a male god who finds a human female attractive? How sexist is that?"**

Everyone laughed and Percy kissed Annabeth in apology.

"Ugh!" Thalia grumbled. "Artemis would be disgusted. This room is filled with lovebirds."

"What?" I scrunched together my eyebrows.

"Well, with you and Jace all cudlly, Percy and Annabeth all... kissy, Piper and Jason and Hazel and Frank with their holding hands." Thalia said, frusterated.

Hazel instantly retracted her hand. Frank simply grabbed it again. It was the first time that I realized that the're were so many couples. I looked at Jace and thought about me being gone. All of this love must have made her feel terribly lonely. Telling by the look in her eye, she didn't feel too comfortable right now either. "I'm sorry I left you." I whispered.

The whole room was silent and I realized that everyone had heard me.

Jace was silent and I could see her close her eyes again. "Is this real?" She asked finally.

"Very." I whispered as Piper began to read.

**"Who's your mom, then?"**

**"Cabin six."**

**"Meaning?"**

**Annabeth straightened. "Athena. Goddess of wisdom and battle."**

**Okay, I thought. Why not?**

"What's that supposed to mean?" asked Annabeth.

"I... nothing." Percy said shakily.

**"And my dad?"**

**"Undetermined," Annabeth said, "like I told you before. Nobody knows."**

**"Except my mother. She knew."**

"Just like my mother." Jacinda scowled.

The Romans looked at her and looked mildly confused.

**"Maybe not, Percy. Gods don't always reveal their identities."**

**"My dad would have. He loved her."**

"You know that how?" I asked without an answer.

**Annabeth ran her palm along the rail. "The gods are busy. They have a lot of kids and they don't always ... Well, sometimes they don't care about us, Percy. They ignore us." I thought about some of the kids I'd seen in the Hermes cabin, teenagers who looked sullen and depressed, as if they were waiting for a call that would never come. I'd known kids like that at Yancy Academy, shuffled off to boarding school by rich parents who didn't have the time to deal with them. But gods should behave better."**

I shut my eyes tight and clenched my teeth, "Don't think like that." I mumbled.

Percy looked at me and made and odd noise with mouth. "What?" Annie asked innocently, "They should."

My eyes shoot open and I stared at her, "Don't ever say that again.

**"So I'm stuck here," I said. "That's it? For the rest of my life?"**

**"It depends," Annabeth said. "Some campers only stay the summer. If you're a child of Aphrodite or Demeter,** **you're probably not a real powerful force. The monsters might ignore you, so you can get by with a few months of summer training and live in the mortal world the rest of the year. But for some of us, it's too dangerous to leave. We're year-rounders. In the mortal world, we attract monsters. They sense us. They come to challenge us. Most of the time, they'll ignore us until we're old enough to cause trouble—about ten or eleven years old, but after that, most demigods either make their way here, or they get killed off. A few manage to survive in the outside world and become famous. Believe me, if I told you the names, you'd know them. Some don't even realize they're demigods. But very, very few are like that."**

**"So monsters can't get in here?"**

**Annabeth shook her head. "Not unless they're intentionally stocked in the woods or specially summoned by somebody on the inside."**

I took another deep breath. "What did you do?" Annie asked cautiously.

"Next chapter." I muttered

**"Why would anybody want to summon a monster?"**

**"Practice fights. Practical jokes."**

**"Practical jokes?"**

"Or if they want to kill the newbie," Percy scowled.

"Luke...?" Piper said shakily. I frowned. "Oh my gods, Luke!"

**"The point is, the borders are sealed to keep mortals and monsters out. From the outside, mortals look into the valley and see nothing unusual, just a strawberry farm."**

**"So ... you're a year-rounder?"**

**Annabeth nodded. From under the collar of her T-shirt she pulled a leather necklace with five clay beads of different colors. It was just like Luke's, except Annabeth's also had a big gold ring strung on it, like a college ring.**

Annabeth fingered the ring on her necklace.

**"I've been here since I was seven," she said. "Every August, on the last day of summer session, you get a bead for surviving another year. I've been here longer than most of the counselors, and they're all in college."**

**"Why did you come so young?"**

**She twisted the ring on her necklace. "None of your business."**

"OHHHH!" Travis shouted.

"You just got burned!" Connor yelled.

**"Oh." I stood there for a minute in uncomfortable silence. "So ... I could just walk out of here right now if I wanted to?"**

"It wouldn't be smart but, yeah."

**"It would be suicide, but you could, with Mr. D's or Chiron's permission. But they wouldn't give permission until the end of the summer session unless ..."**

**"Unless?"**

**"You were granted a quest. But that hardly ever happens. The last time …"**

"Yeah, hardly ever," Thalia said sarcastically, "You guys went on four!"

Jace glared at me, thinking of my quest. "You would have succeeded if you-"

I cut her off. "It was too big of a risk. You could have been killed. I couldn't let that happen."

She kept glaring. "Or were you just arrogant? You thought that you didn't need me."

Piper quickly began to read again, carefully dodging a fight.

**Her voice trailed off. I could tell from her tone that the last time hadn't gone well.**

"You.. were last time?" Annie guessed

"Y-yes, I was." I stuttered, avoiding Jacey's eyes.

**"Back in the sick room," I said, "when you were feeding me that stuff—"**

**"Ambrosia."**

**"Yeah. You asked me something about the summer solstice."**

**Annabeth's shoulders tensed. "So you **_**do **_**know something?"**

"Kelp Head never knows anything!" Thalia huffed.

**"Well... no. Back at my old school, I overheard Grover and Chiron talking about it. Grover mentioned the summer solstice. He said something like we didn't have much time, because of the deadline. What did that mean?"**

**She clenched her fists.**

**"I wish I knew. Chiron and the satyrs, they know, but they won't tell me. Something is wrong in Olympus, something pretty major. Last time I was there, everything seemed so **_**normal**_**."**

**"You've been to Olympus?"**

"How is that coming?" Percy asked.

"Great, really great thank you. It was going so well until Olympus went on lock down..." Annabeth smiled.

I felt so out of it. "What's going well? Olympus is on lock down? What's going on?"

Percy smirked, "Well, after you sort of destroyed Olympus, it had to be totally rebuilt. Annabeth was chosen as the official architect. Suddenly the gods cut all communication with Earth."

I sat and stared at him. "I go to the Underworld for a few years and _this_ happens?" I huffed.

**"Some of us year-rounders—Luke and Clarisse and I and a few others—we took a field trip during winter solstice. That's when the gods have their big annual council."**

**"But... how did you get there?"**

**"The Long Island Railroad, of course. You get off at Penn Station. Empire State Building, special elevator to the six hundredth floor." She looked at me like she was sure I must know this already.**

**"You **_**are **_**a New Yorker, right?"**

**"Oh, sure." As far as I knew, there were only a hundred and two floors in the Empire State Building, but I decided not to point that out.**

**"Right after we visited," Annabeth continued, "the weather got weird, as if the gods had started fighting. A couple of times since, I've overheard satyrs talking. The best I can figure out is that something important was stolen. And if it isn't returned by summer solstice, there's going to be trouble. When you came, I was hoping ... I mean— Athena can get along with just about anybody, except for Ares. And of course she's got the rivalry with Poseidon.**

"Then how does this work?" Jason asked, gesturing to Annabeth and Percy.

"I don't know, it just does," Percy sighed.

**But, I mean, aside from that, I thought we could work together. I thought you might know something." I shook my head. I wished I could help her, but I felt too hungry and tired and mentally overloaded to ask any more questions.**

**"I've got to get a quest," Annabeth muttered to herself. "I'm **_**not **_**too young. If they would just tell me the problem …"**

**I could smell barbecue smoke coming from somewhere nearby. Annabeth must've heard my stomach growl. She told me to go on, she'd catch me later. I left her on the pier, tracing her finger across the rail as if drawing a battle plan. Back at cabin eleven, everybody was talking and horsing around, waiting for dinner. For the first time, I noticed that a lot of the campers had similar features: sharp noses, upturned eyebrows, mischievous smiles. They were the kind of kids that teachers would peg as troublemakers. Thankfully, nobody paid much attention to me as I walked over to my spot on the floor and plopped down with my minotaur horn.**

**The counselor, Luke, came over. He had the Hermes family resemblance, too. It was marred by that scar on his right cheek, but his smile was intact.**

I closed my eyes and imagined the conversation.

**"Found you a sleeping bag," he said. "And here, I stole you some toiletries from the camp store."**

**I couldn't tell if he was kidding about the stealing part.**

"Of course I was!" I said unconvincingly.

**I said, "Thanks."**

**"No prob." Luke sat next to me, pushed his back against the wall. "Tough first day?"**

**"I don't belong here," I said. "I don't even believe in gods."**

**"Yeah," he said. "That's how we all started. Once you start believing in them? It doesn't get any easier."**

**The bitterness in his voice surprised me, because Luke seemed like a pretty easygoing guy. He looked like he could handle just about anything.**

"He could." Jace said.

I open my eyes and looked at her, smiling. From what I remembered, she was about to speak in the book.

**"So your dad is Hermes?" I asked.**

**He pulled a switchblade out of his back pocket, and for a second I thought he was going to gut me, **

"At one point, I would have if you said that." I pointed out.

"Why?" Annie asked. I gave her no answer.

"Hey, don't I come into this at some point?" Jacinda asked Percy and I.

"From what I remember, you should." I frowned, wondering why she wasn't there.

Percy nodded and cocked his eyebrow, "Yeah, you were part of this conversation..." His voice trailed off and Piper continued to read.

**but he just scraped the mud off the sole of his sandal. "Yeah. Hermes."**

"Thank gods he didn't gut you!" Frank said.

"Why is it so important that he stays alive?" Reyna asked.

"Because otherwise, he wouldn't have been there to solve all of the gods' problems." Nico stated.

**"The wing-footed messenger guy."**

"You're so good at descriptions!" Travis rolled his eyes.

**"That's him. Messengers. Medicine. Travelers, merchants, thieves. Anybody who uses the roads. That's why you're here, enjoying cabin eleven's hospitality. Hermes isn't picky about who he sponsors."**

**I figured Luke didn't mean to call me a nobody. He just had a lot on his mind.**

"Sorry man, didn't mean to make you feel that way. There was a lot going on that summer." I frowned.

"It's cool, I get it." Percy assured me.

**"You ever meet your dad?" I asked.**

**"Once."**

**I waited, thinking that if he wanted to tell me, he'd tell me. Apparently, he didn't. I wondered if the story had anything to do with how he got his scar.**

"No, his dad would never give him that," Jace said. She kept talking like I wasn't even there. It made me think that she didn't want me there...

**Luke looked up and managed a smile. "Don't worry about it, Percy. The campers here, they're mostly good people. After all, we're extended family, right? We take care of each other." He seemed to understand how lost I felt, and I was grateful for that, because an older guy like him—even if he was a counselor—should've steered clear of an uncool middle-schooler like me. But Luke had welcomed me into the cabin. He'd even stolen me some toiletries, which was the nicest thing anybody had done for me all day.**

"He has a heart." Jace complimented again.

**I decided to ask him my last big question, the one that had been bothering me all afternoon. "Clarisse, from Ares, was joking about me being 'Big Three' material. Then Annabeth ... twice, she said I might be 'the one.' She said I should talk to the Oracle. What was that all about?"**

**Luke folded his knife. "I hate prophecies."**

"Doesn't everybody?" asked Annie.

"No, Octavian doesn't!" Jacinda laughed. Reyna smiled wide and giggled along.

"Who's Octavian?" Annie and I asked.

"He is an evil Panda murderer!" Percy pouted.

"Excuse me?" Jason asked.

"Oh, Percy is still sour about Octavian cutting the head off of his Pillow Pet the day that he got here." Hazel shrugged. It took us all a moment to process what she just said. When we realized that she had just told us that Percy was overly protective of a stuffed animal, we laughed so hard that no noise was made.

"That's a first!" Jason said between laughs.

**"What do you mean?"**

**His face twitched around the scar. "Let's just say I messed things up for everybody else. The last two years, ever since my trip to the Garden of the Hesperides went sour, Chiron hasn't allowed any more quests. Annabeth's been dying to get out into the world. She pestered Chiron so much he finally told her he already knew her fate. He'd had a prophecy from the Oracle. He wouldn't tell her the whole thing, but he said Annabeth wasn't destined to go on a quest yet. She had to wait until...somebody special came to the camp."**

**"Somebody special?"**

"Oh it was special all right," said Thalia, causing Annabeth and Percy to blush.

**"Don't worry about it, kid," Luke said. "Annabeth wants to think every new camper who comes through here is the omen she's been waiting for. Now, come on, it's dinnertime."**

**The moment he said it, a horn blew in the distance. Somehow, I knew it was a conch shell, even though I'd never heard one before.**

"Where am I?" Jacinda ripped the book from Piper's hands and flipped through the pages. "I'm not in this book! Oh my gods!" She yelled.

"Hey, it's probably better that way..." I said, thinking about how nice it would be to be left out of the books.

"Yeah, considering what happened, you're going to get out easy." Nico huffed.

Annie's jaw dropped. "But, Annabeth! You said that I had to stay to find out what happened and now I'm not going to know!"

"Chill out! This just appeared." Jason picked up a huge box that was in the center of the circle. "Whoa!" He yelled, dropping the box with a _thud! "_That thing is freaking heavy!"

I stood up and helped him bring the box over to the large wooden desk across the room. Together, we tore off the tape and pulled the box open.

"More books..." Jason said, holding up one of them to show the others.

I picked up one of them too. "It has a note on it... _Dear Demigods (and satyr), sorry the first five are messed up. Here are another five. Enjoy. -Apollo."_ I read. I flipped it over and read the summary on the back. "_Unclaimed at camp for 9 years, Jace is understandably fed up. Luke tries to rope her into all of his shenanigans, turning her into something that she isn't, a monster, an animal. She can't help falling for her best friend._"

Jace's face fell. "Dang it! Thanks dad!"

"They're basically the others but in you're point of view," Jason added.

"Okay, for everyone of these," Reyna pointed to Percy's book, "that we read, we will read one of those." She pointed to the box.

We all agreed and Jason and I sat back down.

**Luke yelled, "Eleven, fall in!"**

**The whole cabin, about twenty of us, filed into the commons yard. We lined up in order of seniority, so of course I was dead last. Campers came from the other cabins, too, except for the three empty cabins at the end, and cabin eight, which had looked normal in the daytime, but was now starting to glow silver as the sun went down.**

"Artemis," Thalia cooed.

**We marched up the hill to the mess hall pavilion. Satyrs joined us from the meadow. Naiads emerged from the canoeing lake. A few other girls came out of the woods— and when I say out of the woods, I mean **_**straight **_**out of the woods. I saw one girl, about nine or ten years old, melt from the side of a maple tree and come skipping up the hill.**

**In all, there were maybe a hundred campers, a few dozen satyrs, and a dozen assorted wood nymphs and naiads.**

**At the pavilion, torches blazed around the marble columns. A central fire burned in a bronze brazier the size of a bathtub. Each cabin had its own table, covered in white cloth trimmed in purple. Four of the tables were empty, but cabin eleven's was way overcrowded. I had to squeeze on to the edge of a bench with half my butt hanging off.**

"I did not want that image Kelp Head," said Thalia

**I saw Grover sitting at table twelve with Mr. D, a few satyrs, and a couple of plump blond boys who looked just like Mr. D. Chiron stood to one side, the picnic table being way too small for a centaur.**

**Annabeth sat at table six with a bunch of serious-looking athletic kids, all with her gray eyes and honey-blond hair.**

**Clarisse sat behind me at Ares's table. She'd apparently gotten over being hosed down, because she was laughing and belching right alongside her friends.**

"I hate Aries kids." Annabeth scowled.

"Hey!" Frank gasped.

"Aries kids are very different from Mars kids." Annabeth explained.

**Finally, Chiron pounded his hoof against the marble floor of the pavilion, and everybody fell silent. He raised a glass. "To the gods!"**

**Everybody else raised their glasses. "To the gods!"**

**Wood nymphs came forward with platters of food: grapes, apples, strawberries, cheese, fresh bread, and yes, barbecue! My glass was empty, but Luke said, "Speak to it. Whatever you want—nonalcoholic, of course."**

**I said, "Cherry Coke."**

**The glass filled with sparkling caramel liquid.**

**Then I had an idea. "**_**Blue **_**Cherry Coke."**

**The soda turned a violent shade of cobalt.**

"So _that's_ where the blue Coke came from!" Reyna smiled.

**I took a cautious sip. Perfect.**

**I drank a toast to my mother.**

"You are very loyal to your mother," Hazel remarked.

**She's not gone, I told myself. Not permanently, anyway. She's in the Underworld. And if that's a real place, then someday...**

"Oh gods..." Piper muttered.

**"Here you go, Percy," Luke said, handing me a platter of smoked brisket.**

**I loaded my plate and was about to take a big bite when I noticed everybody getting up, carrying their plates toward the fire in the center of the pavilion.**

**I wondered if they were going for dessert or something.**

"Really, dessert?" asked Annie.

**"Come on," Luke told me.**

**As I got closer, I saw that everyone was taking a portion of their meal and dropping it into the fire, the ripest straw berry, the juiciest slice of beef, the warmest, most buttery roll.**

**Luke murmured in my ear, "Burnt offerings for the gods. They like the smell."**

"You're kidding," Frank laughed, "The smell of burning food?

**"You're kidding."**

**His look warned me not to take this lightly, but I couldn't help wondering why an immortal, all-powerful being would like the smell of burning food.**

**Luke approached the fire, bowed his head, and tossed in a cluster of fat red grapes. "Hermes."**

**I was next.**

**I wished I knew what god's name to say.**

**Finally, I made a silent plea. **_**Whoever you are, tell me. Please.**_

"Aw, isn't that sweet," Leo said sarcastically. His eyes flashed at Jace and I.

"You're being quite," Jacinda pointed out to him, "What's up?"

**I scraped a big slice of brisket into the flames.**

**When I caught a whiff of the smoke, I didn't gag.**

"Why would you gag?" Leo asked.

"I was expecting to smell burned food!" Percy defended.

**It smelled nothing like burning food. It smelled of hot chocolate and fresh-baked brownies, hamburgers on the grill and wildflowers, and a hundred other good things that shouldn't have gone well together, but did. I could almost believe the gods could live off that smoke.**

"That's a little odd..." Frank said.

**When everybody had returned to their seats and finished eating their meals, Chiron pounded his hoof again for our attention.**

**Mr. D got up with a huge sigh. **

"Oh gods..." Jace sighed.

**"Yes, I suppose I'd better say hello to all you brats. Well, hello. Our activities director, Chiron, says the next capture the flag is Friday. Cabin five presently holds the laurels."**

"He isn't too nice..." Reyna frowned.

**A bunch of ugly cheering rose from the Ares table.**

**"Personally," Mr. D continued, "I couldn't care less, but congratulations. Also, I should tell you that we have a new camper today. Peter Johnson."**

"Peter Johnson?" Reyna asked.

"He got our names wrong on purpose." Percy said.

"He's horrible!" Frank said in disgust.

"Yeah, his speech isn't exactly the highlight of our day..." Annabeth frowned.

"I actually liked it because you never knew what he would say..." I said.

**Chiron murmured something.**

**"Er, Percy Jackson," Mr. D corrected. "That's right. Hurrah, and all that. Now run along to your silly campfire. Go on."**

**Everybody cheered. We all headed down toward the amphitheater, where Apollo's cabin led a sing-along. We sang camp songs about the gods and ate s'mores and joked around, and the funny thing was, I didn't feel that anyone was staring at me anymore. I felt that I was home.**

I groaned, "I miss campfires!"

**Later in the evening, when the sparks from the campfire were curling into a starry sky, the conch horn blew again, and we all filed back to our cabins. I didn't realize how exhausted I was until I collapsed on my borrowed sleeping bag.**

**My fingers curled around the Minotaur's horn. I thought about my mom, but I had good thoughts: her smile, the bedtime stories she would read me when I was a kid, the way she would tell me not to let the bedbugs bite.**

"That is very sweet!" Hazel commended. **  
**

**When I closed my eyes, I fell asleep instantly.**

**That was my first day at Camp Half-Blood.**

**I wish I'd known how briefly I would get to enjoy my new home.**

"What is that supposed to mean?" Annie asked.

"Just wait for another... two chapters and you will find out." Annabeth said, skimming over the table of contents. I took a deep breath and prepared for the worst.


	10. We Capture a Flag

**Disclaimer:**** I do not own Percy Jackson and the Olympians. The bolded material is the eighth chapter of The Lightning Thief.**

Piper immediately snatched up the book, eager to read more about Percy and his many adventures.

"We Capture a Flag," She read. I knew what was coming in this chapter: my first attempt to deliberately kill Perseus.

**The next few days I settled into a routine that felt almost normal, if you don't count the fact that I was getting lessons from satyrs, nymphs, and a centaur. Each morning I took Ancient Greek from Annabeth, and we talked about the gods and goddesses in the present tense, which was kind of weird. I discovered Annabeth was right about my dyslexia: Ancient Greek wasn't that hard for me to read. At least, no harder than English.**

**After a couple of mornings, I could stumble through a few lines of Homer without too much headache.**

**The rest of the day, I'd rotate through outdoor activities, looking for something I was good at. Chiron tried to teach me archery,**

"Oh gods..." Jace muttered.

**but we found out pretty quick I wasn't any good with a bow and arrow. He didn't complain, even when he had to desnag a stray arrow out of his tail.**

"Of course!" Jacinda laughed.

"It's not my fault that I'm no son of Apollo!" Percy defended.

"Thank gods!" A tall blonde walked in and sat down.

"Excuse me asking but, who are you?" Annie asked.

"_That_ is Octavian." Reyna muttered.

"I am a third generation Apollo. Roman of course."

At that, Jacinda did the ultimate spit-take after drinking from her water bottle. "Does that mean that I'm _related _ to _you_!"

Jason instantly began laughing. "Very, very, very, distantly. Yes."

"What's so bad about that?" I asked, confused. Octavian scowled and Percy just laughed.

**Foot racing? No good either. The wood-nymph instructors left me in the dust. They told me not to worry about it. They'd had centuries of practice running away from lovesick gods. **

"Cough, cough! Dionysus, cough!" Travis joked.

**But still, it was a little humiliating to be slower than a tree.**

"That's... " Frank looked extremely confused.

"Hilarious?" Leo smiled.

"I was going to say degrading, but that works too." Frank nodded his approval.

**And wrestling? Forget it. Every time I got on the mat, Clarisse would pulverize me.**

**"There's more where that came from, punk," she'd mumble in my ear.**

**The only thing I really excelled at was canoeing, and that wasn't the kind of heroic skill people expected to see from the kid who had beaten the Minotaur.**

"Actually, Poseidon's children are the only ones who are half decent at canoeing so, it is acceptable." Annabeth grinned sweetly at Percy.

**I knew the senior campers and counselors were watching me, trying to decide who my dad was, but they weren't having an easy time of it. I wasn't as strong as the Ares kids, **

"You're mentally stronger." Reyna said.

The whole group, with the exception of Annie, laughed.

"That's not saying much." She said.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Frank protested.

"Ares kids are seriously that dull." Jace giggled.

"Hey!" Frank shouted over the laughter.

Jacinda gasped. "No, not like that! Mars kids are so different from Ares. Like, it's insane." She said quickly.

**or as good at archery as the Apollo kids.**

"Aw! That's so flattering!" Jacey smiled, pressing her hand to her heart.

"But, Octavian isn't good at archery! He sucks!" Jason sighed.

Octavian's glare hardened. "What're you tryin' to say, kid?"

Percy ignored him, "Like Jace said, Romans are very different from us Greeks. Sometimes for the better, others, well... not so much."

We all laughed.

"But, Percy is still not as good at archery as Octavian." Thalia said. Octavian smiled in a gloating way as Piper rolled her eyes and continued to read.

**I didn't have Hephaestus's skill with metalwork **

Leo looked at Percy and sincerely apologized for his misfortune.

**or-gods forbid-Dionysus's way with vine plants.**

"Gods no!" I muttered.

**Luke told me I might be a child of Hermes, a kind of jack-of-all-trades, master of none. But I got the feeling he was just trying to make me feel better. He really didn't know what to make of me either.**

**Despite all that, I liked camp. I got used to the morning fog over the beach, the smell of hot strawberry fields in the afternoon, even the weird noises of monsters in the woods at night.**

"I'm still not used to it." Said Piper

"I can barely hear it." Said Leo, "though it helps that my bed's hidden in the wall."

"Lucky," said Piper

"Wait, you got Beckondorf's bed?" I asked curiously. Leo nodded contently and seemed to be thinking about his bed and most likely, missing it. I frowned, realizing that it was all my fault that Beckondorf was no longer sleeping in that bed.

**I would eat dinner with cabin eleven, scrape part of my meal into the fire, and try to feel some connection to my real dad. Nothing came. Just that warm feeling I'd always had like the memory of his smile. I tried not to think too much about my mom, but I kept wondering: if gods and monsters were real, if all this magical stuff was possible, surely there was some way to save her, to bring her back . . . **

At this, there were several different reactions. "No!" Some of the Romans, including Jason yelled. Some of us Greeks face-palmed. Annabeth slapped Percy's arm and Thalia even went to the extent of zapping him with a gazillion volts of electricity.

**I started to understand Luke's bitterness and how he seemed to resent his father, Hermes.**

Now, it was my turn to scream. "Don't!"

**So okay, maybe gods had important things to do. But couldn't they call once in a while, or thunder, or something? Dionysus could make Diet Coke appear out of thin air. Why couldn't my dad, whoever he was, make a phone appear?**

"Because that would be illegal at camp." Nico said as if it were obvious. Piper blushed and met eyes with Annabeth. What the heck?

**Thursday afternoon, three days after I'd arrived at Camp Half-Blood, I had my first sword-fighting lesson. Everybody from cabin eleven gathered in the big circular arena, where Luke would be our instructor.**

"I remember this! It was awesome!" I said excitedly.

"But, I beat you..." Percy said, confused.

"That is the awesome part. Previously, nobody had beaten me." Frank's jaw dropped.

**We started with basic stabbing and slashing, using some straw-stuffed dummies in Greek armor. I guess I did okay. At least, I understood what I was supposed to do and my reflexes were good.**

"Good? They were great!" Connor said.

**The problem was,** **I couldn't find a blade that felt right in my hands. Either they were too heavy, or too light, or too long, Luke tried his best to fix me up, but he agreed that none of the practice blades seemed to work for me.**

"Thank the gods for Riptide!" Percy smiled about his sword.

**We moved on to dueling in pairs. Luke announced he would be my partner, since this was my first time.**

**"Good luck," one of the campers told me. "Luke's the best swordsman in the last three hundred years."**

**"Maybe he'll go easy on me," I said.**

**The camper snorted.**

"That'll happen!" I snorted.

**Luke showed me thrusts and parries and shield blocks the hard way. With every swipe, I got a little more battered and bruised. "Keep your guard up, Percy," he's say, then whap me in the ribs with the flat of his blade. "No, not that far up!" **_**Whap! "**_**Lunge!" **_**Whap! **_**"Now, back!" **_**Whap!**  
_  
"Sounds like fun!" Jason said sarcastically.

"It wasn't that bad." Jace smiled up at me.

"Gee, I wonder why!" Thalia retorted.

**By the time he called a break, I was soaked in sweat. Everybody swarmed the drinks cooler. Luke poured ice water on his head, which looked like such a good idea. I did the same.**

"Now he's in trouble," Hazel smiled.

"You bet!" I winced, think of how many times Percy had used water to my disadvantage.

**Instantly, I felt better. Strength surged back into my arms. The sword didn't feel so awkward.**

**"Okay, everybody circle up!" Luke ordered. "If Percy doesn't mind, I want to give you a little demo."**

**Great, I thought. Let's all watch Percy get pounded.**

Everyone laughed, "Pretty much what we were thinking..." Travis blushed.

**The Hermes guys gathered around. They were suppressing smiles. I figured they'd been in my shoes before and couldn't wait to see how Luke used me for a punching bag. He told everybody he was going to demonstrate a disarming technique: how to twist the enemy's blade with the flat of your own sword so that he had no choice but to drop his weapon.**

**"This is difficult," he stressed. "I've had it used against me. No laughing at Percy, no. Most swordsmen have to work years to master this technique."**

Percy grinned proudly. "How long did it take you?" Jason asked. Percy shook his head as if to say "You will have to wait and see."

**He demonstrated the move on me in slow motion. Sure enough, the sword clattered out of my hand.**

**"Now in real time," he said, after I'd retrieved my weapon. "We keep sparring until one of us pulls it off. Ready, Percy?"**

**I nodded, and Luke came after me. Somehow, I kept him from getting a shot at the hilt of my sword. My senses opened up. I saw his attacks coming. I countered. I stepped forward and tried a thrust of my own. Luke deflected it easily, but I saw a change in his face. His eyes narrowed, and he started to press me with more force.**

"That made me _so_ nervous!" Percy laughed.

I pursed my lips. "That's when I really figured out that you were a Big Three kid. Nobody else would be that good."

"So, by me actually trying to beat you, you realized that you had to kill me?" He said nonchalantly. I winced.

Leo laughed, "Yep. everyone who beats Luke in a fight must DIE!"

**The sword grew heavy in my hand. The balance wasn't right. I knew it was only a matter of seconds before Luke took me down, so I figured, What the heck?**

**I tried the disarming maneuver.**

**My blade hit the base of Luke's and I twisted, putting my whole weight into a downward thrust.**

_**Clang.**_

**Luke's sword rattled against the stones. The tip of my blade was an inch from his undefended chest.**

Some people just sat, mouths open. Others applauded excitedly.

"And that is how the legend started." I said.

**The other campers were silent.**

**I lowered my sword. "Um, sorry."**

"Why is he apologizing?" asked Leo

"It's Percy," said Nico, "he'll apologize for everything. Even saving the world."

Reyna nodded respectfully, "A very modest hero."

**For a moment, Luke was too stunned to speak.**

**"Sorry?" His scarred face broke into a grin. "By the gods, Percy, why are you sorry? Show me that again!"**

**I didn't want to. The short burst of manic energy had completely abandoned me. But Luke insisted.**

**This time, there was no contest. The moment our swords connected, Luke hit my hilt and sent my weapon skidding across the floor.**

"But, Percy never looses..." Leo said, shocked.

Thalia zapped Leo lightly. "He's already got a big head! Don't make it worse!"

**After a long pause, somebody in he audience said, "Beginner's luck?"**

"So, Luke, you're pretty good?" Jason asked.

I shrugged, "I guess. I'm a bit out of practice though."

"Maybe when we're done reading, we can hit the arena for a bit of fighting." He suggested. I nodded in agreement.

**Luke wiped the sweat off his brow. He appraised at me with an entirely new interest. "Maybe." he said. "But I wonder what Percy could do with a balanced sword. . . "**

"Kick your ass." Nico stated.

**Friday afternoon, I was sitting with Grover at the lake, resting from a near-death experience on the climbing wall. Grover had scampered to the top like a mountain goat but the lava had almost gotten me. My shirt had smoking holes in it. The hairs had singed off my forearms.**

**We sat on the pier, watching the naiads do underwater basket-weaving, until I got up the nerve to ask Grover how his conversation had gone with Mr. D.**

**His face turned a sickly shade of yellow.**

**"Fine," he said. "Just great."**

**"So your career's still on track?"**

**He glanced at me nervously. "Chiron t-told you I want a searcher's license?"**

**"Well . . . no." I had no idea what a searcher's license was but it didn't seem like the right time to ask.**

**"He just said you had big plans, you know . . . and that you needed credit for completing a keeper's assignment. So did you get it?"**

**Grover looked down at the naiads. "Mr. D suspended judgment. He said I hadn't failed or succeeded with you yet, so our fates were still tied together. If you got a quest and I went along to protect you, and we both came back alive, then maybe he'd consider the job complete."**

**My spirits lifted. "Well, that's not so bad, right?"**

**"Blaa-ha-ha! He might as well have transferred me to stable-cleaning duty. The chances of you getting a quest . . . and even if you did, why would you want me along?"**

**"Of course I'd want you along!"**

**Grover stared glumly into the water. "Basket-weaving . . . Must be nice to have a useful skill."**

"How is weaving _useful_?" Frank asked.

Reyna scoffed. "Any skill can be useful when used properly."

**I tried to reassure him that he had lots of talents, but that just made him look more miserable. We talked about canoeing and swordplay for a while, then debated the pros and cons of the different gods. Finally, I asked him about the four empty cabins.**

**"Number eight, the silver one, belongs to Artemis," he said. "She voiced to be a maiden forever. So of course, no kids. The cabin is, you know, honorary. If she didn't have one, she'd be mad."**

**"Yeah, okay. But the other three, the ones at the end. Are those the Big Three?"**

**Grover tensed. We were getting close to a touchy subject "No. One of them, number two, is Hera's." he said.**

Annabeth clenched her fists at the mention of Hera as Percy and Jason began to mutter curses under their breath, threatening the Queen of the gods. "Hera, you can go die in a hole for all we care. Preferably Tartarus. " Jace said. That made me really wonder what had happened while I was dead because Jacinda doesn't just... _hate_ people, let alone gods, for no reason.

"**That's another honorary thing. She's the goddess of marriage, so of course she wouldn't go around having affairs with mortals. That's her husband's job.**

Reyna gasped at the disrespect, while Thalia and Jason nodded in agreement.

**When we say the Big Three, we mean the three powerful bothers, the sons of Kronos."**

**"Zeus, Poseidon, Hades."**

**"Right, You know, After the great battle with the Titans, they took over the world from their dad and drew lots to decide who got what."**

**"Zeus got the sky," I remembered. "Poseidon the sea, Hades the Underworld."**

**"Uh-huh."**

**"But Hades doesn't have a cabin here."**

"Yeah he does," said Jason, Leo, and Piper

"It's brand new," said Nico, "Less than a year old."

"When did that happen?" I asked.

"Let's just say that Percy went to a great extent to fulfill your... final request." Annabeth sighed. I scrunched my eyebrows, trying to remember what I had asked of Percy.

**"No. He doesn't have a throne on Olympus either. He sort of does his own thing down in the Underworld. If he did have a cabin here . . ." Grover shuddered. "Well, it would be pleasant. Let's leave it at that."**

**"But Zeus and Poseidon-they both had, like, a bazillion kids in the myths. Why are their cabins empty?"**

**Grover shifted his hooves uncomfortably. "About sixty years ago, after World War II, the Big Three agreed they wouldn't sire any more heroes. Their children were just too powerful. They were affecting the course of human events too much, causing too much carnage. World War II, you know, that was basically a fight between the sons of Zeus and Poseidon on one side, and the sons of Hades on the other. The winning side, Zeus and Poseidon, made Hades swear an oath with them: no more affairs with mortal women. They all swore on the River Styx."**

**Thunder boomed.**

**I said, "That's the most serious oath you can make."**

**Grover nodded.**

**"And the brothers kept their word-no kids?"**

**Grover's face darkened. "Seventeen years ago, Zeus fell off the wagon. There was this TV starlet with a big fluffy eighties hairdo-he just couldn't help himself. When their child was born, a little girl named Thalia . . . well, the River Styx is serious about promises. Zeus himself got off easy because he's immortal, but he brought a terrible fate on his daughter."**

**"But that isn't fair! It wasn't the little girl's fault."**

"I am not little!" huffed Thalia

**Grover hesitated."Percy, children of the Big Three have powers greater than other half-bloods. They have a strong aura, a scent that attracts monsters. When Hades found out about the girl, he wasn't too happy about Zeus breaking his oath. Hades let the worst monsters out of Tartarus to torment Thalia. **

**A satyr was assigned to be her keeper when she was twelve, but there was nothing he could do. He tried to escort her here with a couple of other half-bloods she'd befriended. They almost made it. They got all the way to the top of that hill."**

**He pointed across the valley, to the pine tree where I'd fought the minotaur. "All three Kindly Ones were after them, along with a hoard of hell hounds. They were about to be overrun when Thalia told her satyr to take the other two half-bloods to safety while she held off the monsters. She was wounded and tired, and she didn't want to love like a hunted animal. The satyr didn't want to leave her, but he couldn't change her mind, and he had to protect the others. So Thalia made her final stand alone, at the top of that hill.**

**As she died, Zeus took pity of her. He turned her into that pine tree. Her spirit still helps protect the borders of the valley. That's why the hill is called Half-Blood Hill."**

Jason hugged Thalia tight as everyone watched, their eyes filled with despair.

**I stared at the pine in the distance.**

**The story made me feel hollow, and guilty too. A girl my age had sacrificed herself to save her friends. She had faced a whole army of monsters. Next to that, my victory over the Minotaur didn't seem like much. I wondered, if I'd acted differently, could I have saved my mother?**

"His thoughts are so pessimistic," said Leo, failing to lighten up the mood.

**"Grover," I said, "have heroes really gone on quests to the Underworld?"**

**"Sometimes," he said. "Orpheus. Hercules. Houdini."**

**"And have they ever returned somebody from the dead?"**

**"No. Never. Orpheus came close . . . Percy, you're not seriously thinking-"**

**"No," I lied. "I was just wondering. So . . . a satyr is always assigned to guard a demigod?"**

**Grover studied me warily. I hadn't persuaded him that I'd really dropped the Underworld idea. "Not always. We go undercover to a lot of schools. We try to sniff out the half-bloods who have the makings of great heroes. If we find one with a very strong aura, like a child of the Big Three, we alert Chiron. He tries to keep an eye on them, since they cause really huge problems."**

"Isn't it kinda ironic that you guys just so happen to be talking about Big Three kids and Percy is coincidentally a son of Poseidon?" I asked, the others nodding their agreement.

**"And you found me. Chiron said you thought I might be something special."**

**Grover looked as if I'd just led him into a trap. "I didn't . . . Oh, listen, don't think like that. If you were-you know-you'd never ever allowed a quest, and I'd never get my license. You're probably a child of Hermes. Or maybe even one of the minor gods, like Nemesis, the god of revenge. Don't worry, okay?"**

"I'm still not as familiar with all the gods' names as others might be," said Piper, "but I'm pretty sure Nemesis is a goddess."

"You're right," said Nico

"I was nervous, okay?" Grover defended when several demigods raised their eyebrows.

**I got the idea he was reassuring himself more than me.**

**That night after dinner, there was a lot more excitement than usual.**

**At last, it was time for capture the flag.**

**When the plates were cleared away, the conch horn sounded and we all stood at our tables.**

**Campers yelled and cheered as Annabeth and two of her siblings ran into the pavilion carrying a silk banner. It was about ten feet long, glistening gray, with a painting of a barn owl above an olive tree.**

**From the opposite side of the pavilion, Clarisse and her buddies ran in with another banner, of identical size, but gaudy red, painted with a bloody spear and a boar's head.**

**I turned to Luke and yelled over the noise, "Those are the flags?"**

**"Yeah."**

**"Ares and Athena always lead the teams?"**

**"Not always," he said. "But often."**

**"So, if another cabin captures one, what do you do-repaint the flag?"**

**He grinned. "You'll see. First we have to get one."**

**"Whose side are we on?"**

**He gave me a sly look, as if he knew something I didn't.**

My face grew hot as I stared at the ceiling, drawing a long, deep breath.

"It's okay man." Percy sighed, putting a hand on my shoulder. "It's the past. You can't change it now."

**The scar on his face made him look almost evil in the torchlight.**

There was a moment of pure silence, in which I could feel everyone's eyes barring down on me.

**"We've made a temporary alliance with Athena. Tonight, we get the flag from Ares. And you are going to help."**

**The teams were announced. Athena had made an alliance with Apollo and Hermes, the two biggest cabins. Apparently, privileges had been traded-shower times, chore schedules, the best slots for activities-in order to win support.**

"Isn't that considered bribery?" Hazel asked.

The Stolls nodded proudly, "Sweet, sweet bribery," Travis grinned.

**Ares had allied themselves with everybody else: Dionysus, Demeter, Aphrodite, and Hephaestus. From what I'd seen, Dionysus's kids were actually good athletes, but there were only two of them.**

**Demeter's kids had the edge with nature skills and outdoor stuff, but they weren't very aggressive. Aphrodite's son and daughters I wasn't too worries about. They mostly sat out every activity and checked their reflections in the lake and did their hair and gossiped.**

**Hephaestus's kids weren't pretty, and there were only four of them, but they were big and burly from working in the metal shop all day. They might be a problem. That, of course, left Ares's cabin: a dozen of the biggest, ugliest, meanest kids on Long Island, or anywhere else on the planet.**

**Chiron hammered his hoof on the marble.**

**"Heroes!" he announced. "You know the rules. The creek is the boundary line. The entire forest is fair game. All magic items are allowed. The banner must be prominently displayed, and have no more than two guards. Prisoners may be disarmed, but may not be bound or gagged. No killing or maiming is allowed. I will serve as referee and battlefield medic. Arm yourselves!"**

**He spread his hands, and the tables were suddenly covered with equipment: helmets, bronze swords, spears, oxhide shields coated in metal.**

**"Whoa," I said. "We're really supposed to use them?"**

**Luke looked at me as if I were crazy "Unless you want to get skewered by your friends in cabin five. Here-Chiron thought these would fit. You'll be on border patrol."**

**My shield was the size of an NBA backboard, with a big caduceus in the middle. It weighed about a million pounds. I could have snowboarded on it fine,**

"Why snowboarding?" Nico asked. Percy just shrugged.

**but I hoped nobody seriously expected me to run fast. My helmet, like all the helmets on Athena's side, had a blue horsehair plume on top. Ares and their allies had red plumes.**

**Annabeth yelled, "Blue team, forward!"**

**We cheered and shook our swords and followed her down the path to the south woods. The red team yelled taunts at us as they headed off toward the north.**

**I managed to catch up with Annabeth without tripping over my equipment. "Hey."**

**She kept marching.**

**"So what's the plan?" I asked. "Got any magic items you can loan me?"**

**Her hand drifted toward her pocket, as if she were afraid I'd stolen something.**

"You thought he was a Hermes kid, didn't you?" Jason asked.

Annabeth blushed. "Maybe..."

**"Just watch Clarisse's spear," she said.**

"Did you know that she would be after me?" Percy asked.

Annabeth shrugged. "I had my suspicions. You made her angry, and she wanted revenge."

**"You don't want that thing touching you. Otherwise, don't worry. We'll take the banner from Ares. Has Luke given you your job?"**

**"Border patrol, whatever that means."**

**"It's easy. Stand by the creek, keep the reds away. Leave the rest to me. Athena always had a plan."**

"Is that like... your catchphrase?" Piper asked. Annabeth shrugged and nodded.

**She pushed ahead, leaving me in the dust.**

**"Okay," I mumbled. "Glad you wanted me on your team."**

Jace, along with a large number of the group, face-palmed.

**It was a warm, sticky night. The woods were dark, with fireflies popping in and out of view. Annabeth stationed me next to a little creek that gurgled over some rocks, then she and the rest of the team scattered into the trees.**

**Standing there alone, with my big blue-feathered helmet and my huge shield, I felt like an idiot.**

"Good," said Nico, "He's on the path to accepting the fact that he's an idiot."

Percy threw his hands in the air. "I'm right here!" He informed us.

"We can change that, you know," the guy called Octavian

**The bronze sword, like all the swords I'd tried so far, seemed balanced wrong. The leather grip pulled on my hand like a bowling ball.**

**There was no way anybody would actually attack me, would they? I mean, Olympus had to have liability issues, right?**

"No, I don't think so. Sorry." Jason shrugged.

**Far away, the conch horn blew. I heard whoops and yells in the woods, the clanking of metal, kids fighting. A blue plumed ally from Apollo raced part me like a deer, leaped through the creek, and disappeared into enemy territory.**

**Great, I though. I'll miss all the fun, as usual.**

**Then I heard a sound that sent a chill up my spine, a low canine growl, somewhere close by.**

"Oh gods..." I said under my breath. Again, Percy and I made awkward eye contact and he shook his head.

**I raised my shield instinctively; I had the feeling something was stalking me.**

**Then the growling stopped. I felt the presence retreating.**

**On the other side of the creek, the underbrush exploded. Five Ares warriors came yelling and screaming out of the dark.**

**"Cream the punk!" Clarisse screamed.**

"Holy Jupiter!" Frank gasped, "That sounds threatening..."

**Her ugly pig eyes glared through the slits of her helmet. She brandished a five-foot-long spear, its barbed metal tip flickering with red light. Her siblings had only the standard issue bronze swords-not that made me feel any better.**

**They charged across the stream. There was no help in sight. I could run. Or I could defend myself against half the Ares cabin.**

"Wait... Isn't he next to the creek?" Leo asked.

Percy nodded suspiciously. "They're screwed!" Jason laughed.

**I managed to sidestep the first kid's swing, but these guys were not as stupid the Minotaur. They surrounded me, and Clarisse thrust at me with her spear. My shield deflected the point, but I felt a painful tingling all over my body. My hair stood on end. My shield arm went numb and the air burned.  
**  
"What..." Hazel's voice faded as Piper continued to read.

**Electricity. Her stupid spear was electric. I fell back.**

The people who hadn't met Clarisse gaped at the book.

**Another Ares guy slammed me in the chest with the butt of his sword and I hit the dirt.**

**They could've kicked me into jelly, but they were too busy laughing.**

**"Give him a haircut, Clarisse said."Grab his hair."**

**I managed to get to my feet. I raised my sword, but Clarisse slammed it aside with er spear as sparks flew. Now both my arms felt numb.**

**"Oh wow," Clarisse said. "I'm scared of this guy. Really scared."**

**"The flag is that way," I told her. I wanted to sound angry, but I was afraid that it didn't come out that way.**

"Idiot!" Thalia exclaimed.

"Sorry! At that point, I was doing anything to keep me alive," Percy defended.

**"Yeah," one of her siblings said. "But see, we don't care about the flag. We care about a guy who made our cabin look stupid."**

**"You do that without my help," I told them**. **It probably wasn't the smartest thing to say.**

"No duh, Kelp Head," said Thalia

**Two of them came at me. I backed up toward the creek, tried to raise my shield, but Clarisse was too fast. Her spear stuck me straight in the ribs. If I hadn't been wearing an armored breastplate, I would've been shishkebabbed.**

**As it was, the electric point just about shocked my teeth out of my mouth. One of her cabinmates slashed his sword across my arm, leaving a good-size cut.**

**Seeing my own blood made me dizzy-warm and cold at the same time.**

"Says the boy who has faced the Minotaur twice, and survived." Snorted Nico

**"No maiming," I managed to say.**

**"Oops," the guy said. "Guess I lost my dessert privilege."**

**He pushed me into the creek and I landed with a splash. They all laughed. I figured as soon as they were through being amused, I would die.**

**But then something happened. The water seemed to wake up my senses, as if I'd just had a bag of my mom's double-espresso jellybeans.**

"Is that good?" asked Leo

"For me, yes," said Percy, "for Clarisse, probably not."

**Clarisse and her cabinmates came into the creek to get me, but I stood to meet them. I knew what to do. I swung the flat of my sword against the first guy's head and knocked his helmet clean off. I hit him so hard I could see his eyes vibrating as he crumpled into the water.**

**Ugly Number Two and Ugly Number Three came at me. I slammed one in the face with my shield and used my sword to shear off the other guy's horsehair plume. Both of them backed up quick.**

**Ugly Number Four didn't look really anxious to attack, but Clarisse kept coming, the point of her spear crackling with energy. As soon as she thrust. I caught the shaft between the edge of my shield and my sword, and I snapped it like a twig.**

The group cheered loudly, shaking their fists in the air.

**"Ah!" she screamed. "You idiot! You corpse-breath worm!"**

"SOOO offensive." Percy said mockingly.

"It is!" Frank gasped.

Percy just shrugged. "I've been called much worse."

**She probably would've said worse, but I smacked her between the eyes with my sword-butt and sent her stumbling backward out of the creek.**

**Then I heard yelling, elated screams, and I saw Luke racing toward the boundary line with the red team's banner lifted high. He was flanked by a couple of Hermes guys covering his retreat, and a few Apollos behind them, fighting off the Hephaestus kids. The Ares folks got up, and Clarisse muttered a dazed curse.**

**"A trick!" she shouted. "It was a trick."**

**They staggered after Luke, but it was too late. Everybody converged on the creek as Luke ran across into friendly territory. Our side exploded into cheers. The red banner shimmered and turned to silver. The boar and spear were replaced with a huge caduceus, the symbol of cabin eleven.**

I smiled to myself, remembering the exhilarating feeling that I always got from sprinting across the creek.

**Everybody on the blue team picked up Luke and started carrying him around on their shoulders. Chiron cantered out from the woods and blew the conch horn.**

**The game was over. We'd won.**

**I was about to join the celebration when Annabeth's voice, right next to me in the creek, said, "Not bad, hero."**

**I looked, but she wasn't there.**

"That cursed hat!" Percy muttered.

**"Where the heck did you learn to fight like that?" she asked. The air shimmered, and she materialized, holding a Yankees baseball cap as if she'd just taken it off her head.**

**I felt myself getting angry. I wasn't even fazed by the fact that she'd just been invisible.**

**"You set me up," I said. "You put me here because you knew Clarisse would come after me, while you sent Luke around the flank. You had it all figured out."**

**Annabeth shrugged. "I told you. Athena always always has a plan."**

**"A plan to get me pulverized."**

"I didn't like that plan," said Percy

"Why not?" Annabeth asked. Percy glared.

"Gee, I wonder."

**"I came as fast as I could. I was about to jump in, but . . ." she shrugged. "You didn't need help."**

**Then she noticed my wounded arm. "How did you do that?"**

**"Sword cut," I said. "What do you think?"**

**"No. It was a sword cut. Look at it!"**

**The blood was gone. Where the huge cut had been, there was a long white scratch, and even that was fading. As I watched, it turned into a small scar, and disappeared.**

"That is awesome!" said Leo

**"I-I don't get it," I said.**

**Annabeth was thinking hard. I could almost see the gears turning. She looked down at my feet, then at Clarisse's broken spear, and said, "Step out of the water, Percy."**

**"What-"**

**"Just do it."**

**I came out of the creek and immediately felt bone tired. My arms started to go numb again. My adrenaline rush left me. I almost fell over, but Annabeth steadied me.**

**"Oh Styx," she cursed. "This is not good. I didn't want . . . I assumed it would be Zeus . . ."**

"What're you trying to say?" Jason asked sarcastically.

**Before I could ask what she meant, I heard that canine growl again, but much closer than before. A howl ripped through the forest.**

Jace squeezed my hand tighter. I hid my face in her long brown locks to retain my sanity. Jacinda always gave me the feeling that it was all going to be okay.

**The campers' cheering died instantly. Chiron shouted something in Ancient Greek, which I would realize, only later, I had understood perfectly. **_**"Stand ready! My bow!"**_

**Annabeth drew her sword.**

**There on the rocks just above us was a black hound the size of a rhino, with lava-red eyes and fangs like daggers.**

**It was looking straight at me. **

I wrapped my arms around Jace's midsection, holding on to the only part of the world that I felt sure about. The only part that seemed real to me.

**Nobody moved except Annabeth, who yelled. "Percy, run!"**

"No dip!" Jason shouted.

**She tried to step in front of me, but the hound was too fast. It leaped over her-an enormous shadow with teeth-and just as it hit me, as I stumbled backward and felt its razor-sharp claws ripping through my armor, there was a cascade of thwacking sounds, like forty pieces of paper being ripped one after the other. From the hound's neck sprouted a cluster of arrows. The monster fell dead at my feet.**

In my mind, I was thanking Chiron for that. What would I have done if Percy died?

**By some miracle, I was still alive. I didn't want to look underneath the ruins of my shredded armor. My chest felt warm and wet, and I knew I was badly cut.**

**Another second and the monster would've turned me into a hundred pounds of delicatessen meat.**

**Chiron trotted up next to us, a bow in his hand, his face grim.**

**"Di **_**immortales!"**_** Annabeth said. "That's a hellhound from the Fields of Punishment. They don't . . . they're not supposed to . . ."**

**"Someone summoned it," Chiron said. "Someone inside the camp."**

Everyone looked at me. Annie looked like she had been hit in the face, mouth hanging open. "How dare you?" She scolded.

"Annie, I-" I tried to plead my case, but she crossed her arms and wouldn't look at me.

**Luke came over, the banner in his hand forgotten, his moment of glory gone.**

**Clarisse yelled, "It's all Percy's fault! Percy summoned it!"**

"_YES, _because he would summon a creature from the depths of Hell to attack himself. Sounds like a brilliant idea." Jason groaned.

**"Be quiet, child," Chiron told her.**

**We watched the body of the hellhound melt into shadow, soaking into the ground until it disappeared.**

**"You're wounded," Annabeth told me. "Quick, Percy, get in the water."**

**"I'm okay."**

**"No you're not," she said. "Chiron, watch this."**

**I was too tired to argue. I stepped back into the creek, the whole camp gathering around me.**

**Instantly, I felt better. I could feel the cuts on my chest closing up. Some of the campers gasped.**

**"Look, I-I don't know why, I said, trying to apologize."I'm sorry . . ."**

"Again," groaned Piper, "what's with the unnecessary apologizing?"

**But they weren't watching my wounds heal. They were staring at something above my head.**

**"Percy," Annabeth said, pointing. "Um . . ."**

**By the time I looked up, the sign was already fading, but I could still make out the hologram of green light, spinning and gleaming. A three-tipped spear: a trident.**

**"Your father," Annabeth murmured. "This is really not good."**

"And why not?" asked Reyna.

Annabeth pursed her lips. "I was a selfish little daughter of Athena."

**"It's determined," Chiron announced.**

**All around me, campers started kneeling, even the Ares cabin, though they didn't look happy about it.**

**"My father?" I asked, completely bewildered.**

**"Poseidon," said Chiron. "Earthshaker, Stormbringer, Father of Horses, Hail, Perseus Jackson, Son of the Sea God."**

Everyone in the room began to applaud.


End file.
